How Dominant Were the PS1 And PS2 REALLY??

"Video games as we know them would be relegated to Japan if not for Nintendo revitalising gaming worldwide." Europe says hi. The console crash was an American thin, the rest of the world carried on regardless.

ai nintendo fanboy has a meltie over playstation for 15 minutes

One of the reasons ps1 and ps2 don't have such high selling individual games is they had such a hugh variety of games. Nintendo had a lot of restrictions for games made for their systems.

"Selling hardware at a loss wasn't a standard procedure" Uh, yeah it was. For everyone but Nintendo, anyway. Or smaller companies like SNK who made the Neo-Geo specifically for a higher-priced part of the market. AFAIK, the Genesis was sold for thin margins. Same with the Atari Jaguar. The 3DO had a huge price cut because it wasn't selling at all prior to the price cut. Sony just did what other companies were already doing at the time. Sega also sold Dreamcast at a loss (they were gonna sell it at $249 at first).

From my perspective as a gal being raised in New Zealand. I didn't even know Nintendo home consoles existed here. We were a Sony stronghold. The PS1 and PS2 were what I grew up with and I didn't even know that the N64 or GameCube were a thing that existed because they didn't even really have any shelf space at my local EBGames. Nintendo only really got presence in the home console market here in NZ with the Wii. Before that they were getting bodied. The PS1 went nuts here but the PS2 went absolutely GANGBUSTERS. Outside of handhelds, Nintendo were a non player here, and this roughly extended to other parts of Oceania and Europe as well. For me, well, I was there, I lived it, the PS1 and PS2 dominated. When they were relevant, all my friends had a PS1 or PS2. A few had an Xbox. Not a single one had an N64 or GameCube. I think it speaks for itself really

"Not one 20 million seller on ps1 or ps2" Gta: You forgot i existed?

Buddy you forgot to mention that Resident Evil SKIPPED the PS2 for most of that gen due to Nintendo's exclusivity deal with Capcom. Which actually hurt Resident Evil sales on PS2 once RE4 got its PS2 port. You can blame Nintendo on that ;)

And the switch is the most repaired system in world of history.

You forget to mention Nintendo always package a Mario game with their system. Playstation never really had the same game packaged for longer than a 3 or 6 month period

What console prior to PS2 had a smaller install base with a 30-million seller? I'm guessing you aren't including PS1, so which is it? It's not Dreamcast, it's not N64, it's not Saturn, it's not Neo-Geo, it's not SNES, it's not Genesis. It's not OG Xbox and it's not the 360. So what's this console with the 30-million seller on an install base way smaller than PS2's? Or are you talking about handhelds like Gameboy?

I was there. The PS1 & PS2 were and still are HUGE. Don't be weird. Celebrate the awesomeness.

From my experience at the time, when I was a wee lass, other kids around me had PS1s, but I knew of the N64, it got ample coverage in the one single gaming magazine issue I had, and both my cousin and my neighbour at one point borrowed an N64 for their school holidays, presumably because whoever they borrowed it from had gotten a shiny new 6th gen console, I never went to see them though, cuz since my cousin had borrowed an N64, that meant I could borrow his Super Nintendo, and I was FAR too busy playing Killer Instinct! The ONLY GAME included with the borrowed SNES xD (Bloody good game though!) The PlayStation went on to become my first proper console, after the PS2 was already out, and I knew it was already out, but I was majorly put-off by the PS2's library, as every game I saw on the system was edgy and violent and umm... Yeah no, I knew the PS1 actually had games for kids, and I was, well, a kid, besides it was being sold as the budget alternative at the time, with the smaller rounder PSone, the one I'll always be nostalgic for~ During that time however, slowly everyone around me was picking up PS2s, and I had no idea what Nintendo was up to, I thought the N64 was still current for the longest time, it wasn't until later that a friend of mine told me: "My cousin has a Game Cube, and it has a fighting game in it with every character! Even Mario!" And that caught me off-guard, because like umm... Daf@#% is a Game Cube? And also, What Game Is That?!?! And I'd still never actually see one, much like how I hadn't really seen an N64... Well, not until MUCH later... And I actually went on to buy an used N64 circa 2008! It wasn't until after the Wii was already out, and my mind was utterly blown by it, that I found out what the heck a Game Cube actually was, the funnier thing is, though I'd actually heard of the Game Cube Exactly Once years prior, I'd NEVER heard of an "Xbox" until Months Later, when a classmate told me he wanted an Xbox 360, which I was, once again, taken aback, Daf@#% is an Xbox?!?! I may or may not have seen an advert for an Xbox in a magazine before that point, and thought it was made up, that it wasn't real, but I'm not sure if it really was an Xbox or if it was somethine else entirely lol Long story short, the PS1 and PS2 were the consoles people around me (and in the case of the former, myself) actually had, and the N64 and to a MUCH Lesser extent, Game Cube, were consoles I'd only heard of, but not actually really seen at the time, so like, yeah, they were Quite Dominant I'd say, at least outside of America and Japan where Nintendo had much less of a market presence...

N64 never outsold PS1 globally. Like, at all. It did have a lot of months of outselling PS1 in North America, but in Japan it was an also-ran even behind Saturn, let alone PS1. I don't think N64 ever did very well in Europe compared to PS1, either.

I think the (positive) problem is that Sony did not have that those IPs like Mario that everyone buys regardless. I say this is positive because it allowed them to experiment a lot more. If they had something like Mario back then, I'm sure the PS1 and PS2 would have far less diverse libraries. Hell, we had 3 mascot platformers on the PS2 that are superb to play, even to this day. The same could be said about Xbox, the console has a bunch of quirky titles, some are meh but others are very underrated like Crimson Skies or JSRF. None of these games were ever popular but that doesn't contribute to the fun anyway. Pokemon today is a giant but the games are laughable, it's not a sign of quality. Modern Sony unfortunately ressembles Nintendo too much, focusing hard on the "system sellers" like GoW, Spiderman and TLOU. I think what made everyone enjoy the PS1 and PS2 was that they were a hub of video games, gigantic libraries for everyone's tastes... and that backwards compatibility was great too.

Veryyyyyy dominant...unbeatable

Nintendo and sega are far from perfect but they were always the video game companies in my eyes, Sony always made movies more so they did video games

Also actually, the PS2 did make Sony a crap ton of money. Yes, there isn't one singular PS2 game that maybe outsold the best-selling N64 or Gamecube game (tho I'd think there are PS2 games that have outsold vast majority of best-selling Gamecube ones), Sony got WAY more in third-party royalties than Nintendo ever did. So the 100K, 500K, 1 million etc. copies each game on PS2 did sell, added up when they had like 10x (if not more) the number of games than Gamecube AND Sony were getting royalties off the sale of EVERY third-party game on the system in addition to the money they got from first-party sales. And yeah that's even with piracy factored in, which wasn't as bad as Dreamcast's and was only really a thing in some of the Middle East, African & South American countries the system wasn't even really distributed in. Since PS2 wasn't legally sold in a lot of those small markets, people there had no choice but to pirate. But they weren't the big money buyers at all, so that didn't cut into a lot of revenue for third-party sales in the official markets.

Let me save you 15 mins. Playstation was basically coca cola, Nintendo was basically Pepsi, sure people had a favourite, but the go to was Playstation

To dismiss Xbox as a nothing burger is laughable.. Halo shall forever remain one of the best launch titles ever, Gamecube a system I say bury me with had nothing of that caliber release day or PS2 for that matter My family&friends would have Lan parties 16 of us, 4systems&4tvs Double Dash 16players is the only way to play haha I bought the Sega Saturn day one an knew 9/9/95 Sony was taking over just renting the system from blockbuster.. should have played that system intro haha Nintendo cheddar bob shot themselves from the jump, trying to dictate game companies on how many games they could release annually Its why Sega Genesis had their success not being as restrictive.. along with games&marketing.. whats it say though that Sony was left at altar by nintendo, rejected by Sega, only to beat them both for almost the past 30yrs?!? Wii&switch seem more luck than anything Gamecube was better but masses chose wii (which basically was a gamecube anyway, hence backwards compatibility an controller ports) switch is still missing virtual console, a joke online play setup, voice chat we have to jump thru hoops like we’re circus animals haha I had to pay $80-$100 for the top n64 games back then nwo/wcw revenge Perfect Dark Donkey Kong 64 Resident Evil 64 Conkers Bad Fur Day.. contrast that to paying 40 for any PS1 title Crash Bandicoot Resident Evil Twisted Metal 2 Spyro Gran Turismo Metal Gear Solid Silent Hill.. was just having this discussion watching ufc on saturday haha

I can't fathom anyone trying to trivialize the success of these consoles, especially if you were there to live it, then there should be absolutely no doubt, it wasn't even close...the numbers were the numbers for a reason, pure substance, and in a time when not everyone and their mother played games, like they do today...it was def much more niche. The PS1 especially had seismic impact on a cultural level, it was the first adult experience for games, they dominated in a market that was cornered by giants, why? Because the games were brilliant, Resident Evil , Tomb Raider, MGS, FF, Crash, Twisted Metal...could go on and on, the Nintendo was viewed as KIDDY CONSOLE in comparison