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Sega and Sony: New Insight into the Partnership That Never Came to Be

Discussion in 'General Sega Discussion' started by Gryson, Mar 18, 2019.

  1. Gryson

    Gryson

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  2. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I don't know enough about the Sony corporation as it stood around 1993 to really comment, but I'm not too sure that Nintendo killed their Sony "Play Station" deal on the grounds that Sony was huge. Philips was huge (in terms of electronics at least) - I just think Nintendo didn't like optical media, and wanted to bury their much-hyped CD plans by dumping responsibility on filthy foreigners.


    Don't know. Hindsight is 20:20 but I'm not convinced Sega (of Japan) made bad choices, just that Sony ultimately made better ones.
     
  3. Gryson

    Gryson

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    From reading those Sony books that I cite in the article, Ohga/Kutaragi at least believed that Nintendo's deal with Philips was purely a "ploy" (the exact word used). Essentially, Nintendo realized that their contract with Sony sucked, since it would give Sony full control of the CD format, so at the last minute they contracted with Philips with no real intention of following through on anything. However, that let them completely undermine Sony. The day after Sony announced the collaboration with Nintendo, Nintendo announced that it was actually partnering with Philips. In the end, Philips was left holding the licenses to some Nintendo properties but that was about it.

    In trying to make sense of what Sato says, I would guess that Sega was wary of partnering with Sony not only because of Sony's size, but because Ohga did not seem that willing to cooperate with them. It seemed that if Sega wanted to push for a partnership, it was only going to be with them holding the short end of the stick. But who knows. Sato does mention (I didn't include it in the article) that such discussions of partnerships did occasionally come up and usually nothing came of them. I mean, why tie up your fate with another company that you have no real control over? The rewards would have to be worth it for both sides.
     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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