When it comes to the videogame industry, Nintendo might be the most interesting company to study. They have had such a wildly successful run of things that continues to this very day, and they’ve managed their history run due to all sorts of zigs and zags that no one ever saw coming. Sometimes Nintendo was so unpredictable that they even blindsided potential partners, and that very much applies to Sony.
There are a handful of moments in Nintendo history where things went incredibly wrong for the company…at least at first. When you look back at projects like the Virtual Boy and Wii U, you might first think of them as failures, but without those missteps we wouldn’t have seen successes like the 3DS and Switch. That same line of thinking could be applied to the potential partnership between Sony and Nintendo back on the SNES, but perhaps on a scale we haven’t seen since.
Diehard Nintendo fans know that Sony and Nintendo almost worked together for a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES that would have been called the SNES PlayStation. In the 11th hour Nintendo got cold feet and pivoted to a deal with Phillips, which could certainly be considered the Big N’s greatest fumble. Not partnering with Sony for the SNES add-on caused Sony to release the PlayStation, which has becoming one of the game industry’s biggest juggernauts.
Ken Kutaragi, widely considered to be the father of the PlayStation, was front-and-center when it came to the SNES-CD. He was there from the project’s inception all the way up to the shift to the cancelled add-on becoming the PlayStation. In a chat with Games Industry, Kutaragi looks back on the shock of the situation, but also aims to set the record straight about his supposed desire for revenge against the Big N.
