Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Did Nintendo help make PlayStation?
The relationship between Sony and Nintendo started when Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi became interested in working with video games after seeing his daughter play games on Nintendo's Famicom video game console. He took on a contract at Sony for developing hardware that would drive the audio subsystem of Nintendo's next console, the Super NES. Kutaragi secretly developed the chip, known as the Sony SPC 700. As Sony was uninterested in the video game business, most of his superiors did not approve of the project, but Kutaragi found support in Sony executive Norio Ohga and the project was allowed to continue. The success of the project spurred Nintendo to enter into a partnership with Sony to develop both a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES and a Sony-branded console that would play both SNES cartridges, as well as titles released for the new Super Disc format.
In 1972, the first commercially available video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had a light gun accessory, the Shooting Gallery. This was the first involvement of Nintendo in video games. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had -- even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States -- an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey (released in 1972), since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in 1970s".
Following the launch of the next-generation 32-bit Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn, sales of 16-bit hardware and software continued to account for 64% of the video game market in 1995. Sega underestimated the continued popularity of the Genesis and did not have the inventory to meet demand for the product. Sega was able to capture 43% of the dollar share of the U.S. video game market and claimed to have sold more than 2 million Genesis units in 1995, while Genesis software such as "Vectorman" remained highly successful, but Kalinske estimated that "we could have sold another 300,000 Genesis systems in the November/December timeframe." Nakayama's decision to focus on the Saturn over the Genesis, based on the systems' relative performance in Japan, has been cited as the major contributing factor in this miscalculation. By contrast, Nintendo concentrated on the 16-bit home console market, as well as its successful handheld, the Game Boy. As a result, Nintendo took in 42% of the video game market dollar share, without launching a 32-bit console to compete directly with the PlayStation or the Saturn. Following tensions with Sega Enterprises, Ltd. over its focus on the Saturn, Kalinske, who oversaw the rise of the Genesis in 1991, grew uninterested in the business and resigned in mid-1996.
Throughout its lifetime, Sony's PlayStation Portable has been the main market competitor. There have been four different models of the Nintendo DS line on the market: the original Nintendo DS, the Nintendo DS Lite, as well as the Nintendo DSi and its XL variant. The Nintendo DS line has been highly successful, continuing the trend of its predecessor, the Game Boy line. With over 154 million units sold worldwide, the DS models are the best-selling handheld consoles, and second best-selling console overall behind the PlayStation 2.
Nintendo executives were initially reluctant to design a new system, but as the market transitioned to the newer hardware, Nintendo saw the erosion of the commanding market share it had built up with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo's fourth-generation console, the Super Famicom, was released in Japan on November 21, 1990; Nintendo's initial shipment of 300,000 units sold out within hours. The machine reached North America as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 23, 1991, and Europe and Australia in April 1992.
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), also known as the Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Australasia (Oceania), and 1993 in South America. In Japan, the system is called the Super Famicom (SFC). In South Korea, it is known as the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent the different versions from being compatible with one another.
Kondo was the third person hired by Nintendo to create music and sound effects for their games, joining Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka. However, he was the first at Nintendo to actually specialize in musical composition. The first game he worked on was the arcade game "Punch-Out!!", although it was before he had officially joined Nintendo. Despite creating mostly jingles and sound effects, he was able to overcome the challenges of early arcade sound hardware. As the Famicom had become highly popular in Japan, Kondo was assigned to compose music for the console's subsequent games at Nintendo's new development team, Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). Kondo also wrote an instruction manual on how to program Japanese popular music into the Famicom using the peripheral "Family BASIC". To conclude his first year at Nintendo, he created the music to "Devil World" alongside Akito Nakatsuka. In 1985, Nintendo started marketing the Famicom abroad under the name the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to capitalize on the 1983 video game crash that devastated Atari, Inc. He composed the music for the hit releases "Super Mario Bros." (1985) and "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which helped the system to sell 60 million copies in total and established some of the most well-known melodies in the video game industry.
The Nintendo DSi (abbreviated to DSi) is a dual-screen handheld game console released by Nintendo. The console launched in Japan on November 1, 2008, and worldwide beginning in April 2009. It is the third iteration of the Nintendo DS, and its primary market rival is Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP). Development of the DSi began in late 2006, and the handheld was unveiled during an October 2008 Nintendo conference in Tokyo. Consumer demand convinced Nintendo to produce a slimmer handheld with larger screens than the DS Lite. Consequently, Nintendo removed the Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridge slot to improve portability without sacrificing durability.
In 2001, Nintendo introduced the redesigned Game Boy Advance. The same year, Nintendo also released the GameCube to lukewarm sales, and it ultimately failed to regain the market share lost by the Nintendo 64. When Yamauchi, company president since 1949, retired on 24 May 2002, Satoru Iwata became first Nintendo president who was unrelated to the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage since its founding in 1889.
Miyamoto went on to become the company's first artist. He helped create the art for the company's first original coin-operated arcade video game, "Sheriff". He first helped the company develop a game with the release "Radar Scope". The game achieved moderate success in Japan, but by , Nintendo's efforts to break it into the North American video game market had failed, leaving the company with a large number of unsold units and on the verge of financial collapse. In an effort to keep the company afloat, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to convert unsold "Radar Scope" units into a new arcade game. He tasked Miyamoto with the conversion, about which Miyamoto has said self-deprecatingly that "no one else was available" to do the work. Nintendo's head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi, supervised the project.
In spite of the launch of the PlayStation and the Saturn, sales of 16-bit hardware/software continued to account for 64% of the video game market in 1995. Sega underestimated the continued popularity of the Genesis, and did not have the inventory to meet demand for the product. Sega was able to capture 43% of the dollar share of the U.S. video game market and sell more than 2 million Genesis units in 1995, but Kalinske estimated that "we could have sold another 300,000 Genesis systems in the November/December timeframe." Nakayama's decision to focus on the Saturn over the Genesis, based on the systems' relative performance in Japan, has been cited as the major contributing factor in this miscalculation. According to Sega Technical Institute head Roger Hector, after Sony's release of the PlayStation, the atmosphere at Sega became political, with "lots of finger-pointing".
In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video arcade game industry with "EVR Race", designed by their first game designer, Genyo Takeda, and several more games followed. Nintendo had some small success with this venture, but the release of "Donkey Kong" in 1981, designed by Miyamoto, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success of the game and many licensing opportunities (such as ports on the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision) gave Nintendo a huge boost in profit and in addition, the game also introduced an early iteration of Mario, then known in Japan as Jumpman, the eventual company mascot.
Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition, known as Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and Australia and in Japan, is a dedicated video game console by Nintendo, which emulates the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It launched on November 10, 2016 in Australia and Japan, and November 11, 2016 in North America and Europe. Aesthetically, the console is a miniature replica of the NES, and it includes a static library of 30 built-in games from the licensed NES library, supporting save states for all of them.
Nintendo produced and sold about 2.3 million NES Classic Editions from November 2016 through April 2017, with shipments selling out nearly immediately. In April 2017, Nintendo announced they were discontinuing the product, leading to consumer confusion, and incidents of greatly increased pricing among private sellers. Due to the demand of the NES Classic, and the success of the Super NES Classic Edition console, Nintendo re-introduced the NES Classic on June 29, 2018. Production was discontinued again, this time permanently, in December 2018.
Their first video arcade game was 1975's "EVR Race"; a handful of others followed in the next several years, "Radar Scope" and "Donkey Kong" being among the most famous of these. The early 1980s saw Nintendo's video game division (led by Yokoi) creating some of its most famous arcade titles. The massively popular "Donkey Kong" was created in 1981, with Shigeru Miyamoto as its mastermind, and released in the arcades and on the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and ColecoVision video game systems (although Nintendo themselves generally had no involvement with these early console ports). This release method would be used on several later Nintendo arcade games of this same period, including the original "Mario Bros." (not to be confused with the later "Super Mario Bros.") In addition to this arcade and dedicated console game activity, Nintendo was testing the consumer handheld video game waters with the Game & Watch.
"Pac-Pix" was developed and published by Namco. The game was debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2004 as a technology demonstration for the newly unveiled Nintendo DS hardware. According to producer Hideo Yoshizawa, "Pac-Pix" was conceived as an arcade game by director Tetsuya Shinoda four years prior. Using Apple personal digital assistants (PDAs), Shinoda noticed how corrected text would disappear with a tiny puff of smoke when crossed out by the user; he found this type of control intuitive and wanted to implement it into a game. Two years later, the creators pitched the idea as a tablet computer and PDA game, but found the game and the target audience for such hardware did not match. When the DS was announced, Yoshizawa stated that "the time was right". The E3 demo "Pac-Pix" was met with praise from people within the video game industry, many of which requested it be made into a full game. Namco obliged by putting together a development team, which implemented more effective use of the hardware's two screens. According to Yoshizawa, the most difficult aspect of production on "Pac-Pix" was allowing the player to determine size, shape, and place of their own sketches within the gameplay environment.
Shortly after the partnership with Microsoft, Silicon Knights announced that "Too Human", a game originally conceived for the Sony PlayStation, would be coming to Microsoft's Xbox 360 console as a planned trilogy. The game, dramatically reworked from the original concept, married the ideas of Norse mythology with high technology. The company was subject to a successful countersuit from Epic Games in May 2012 over the development of games using Epic's Unreal Engine 3, and the latter was awarded US $4.45 million in damages. Silicon Knights was also ordered to destroy all copies of existing titles using the engine, as well as in-development games "The Sandman", "Siren in the Maelstrom" and "The Box/Rytualist".
Nintendo's Game Boy handheld was first released in 1989. The gaming device was the brainchild of long-time Nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi, who was the person behind the "Ultra Hand", an expanding arm toy created and produced by Nintendo in 1970, long before Nintendo would enter the video game market. Yokoi was also responsible for the Game & Watch series of handhelds when Nintendo made the move from toys to video games.
"Pokémon Colosseum" was developed by the Japanese game developer Genius Sonority, and published by Nintendo. Just as Nintendo 64 predecessors "Pokémon Stadium" and "Pokémon Stadium 2" had served as home console counterparts to the first- and second-generation handheld titles, "Colosseum" had a similar role for the third generation.
Sonic Team hoped that "Phantasy Star Online" would be successful in Japan; international sales were seen as a bonus. In North America, which Naka believed would be the biggest market, "Phantasy Star Online" was released on January 29, 2001. It sold 75,000 copies there on the first day and was the bestselling game that week. Sega's North American online gaming service SegaNet was not required for online play. While the Japanese version supported the modem and broadband adapters, the North American release did not support the broadband adapter, but "IGN" explained how to use it by swapping discs with an import copy.
Released in 1988, the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in Europe, Japan and Australia) was Sega's entry into the fourth generation of video game consoles. In mid-1990, Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama hired Tom Kalinske as president and CEO of Sega of America. Kalinske developed a four-point plan for sales of the Genesis: lower the price of the console, create a U.S.-based team to develop games targeted at the American market, continue aggressive advertising campaigns, and sell "Sonic the Hedgehog" with the console. The Japanese board of directors initially disapproved of the plan, but all four points were approved by Nakayama, who told Kalinske, "I hired you to make the decisions for Europe and the Americas, so go ahead and do it." Magazines praised "Sonic" as one of the greatest games ever made, and Sega's console finally took off as customers who had been waiting for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) decided to purchase a Genesis instead. However, the release of a CD-based add-on for the Genesis, the Sega CD (known as Mega-CD outside of North America), was commercially disappointing.
The Sega Genesis, known as the in regions outside of North America, is a 16-bit video game console that was developed and sold by Sega. First released in Japan in 1988, in North America in 1989 and in PAL regions in 1990, the Genesis is Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. The system supports a library of more than 700 games created both by Sega and a wide array of third-party publishers and delivered on ROM cartridges. It can also play the complete library of Master System games when the separately sold Power Base Converter is installed. The Sega Genesis also benefited from numerous peripherals, including the Sega CD and Sega 32X, several network services, and multiple first-party and third-party variations of the console that focused on extending its functionality. The console and its games continue to be popular among fans, collectors, video game music fans, and emulation enthusiasts. Licensed third party re-releases of the console are still being produced, and several indie game developers continue to produce games for it. Many games have also been re-released in compilations for newer consoles and offered for download on various digital distribution services, such as Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam.
At that time, negotiations were still on-going between Nintendo and Sony, with Nintendo offering Sony a "non-gaming role" regarding their new partnership with Philips. This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his work with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony. Negotiations officially ended in May 1992 and in order to decide the fate of the PlayStation project, a meeting was held in June 1992, consisting of Sony President Ohga, PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony's board. At the meeting, Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board. Eventually, Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo. Nevertheless, due to strong opposition from a majority present at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives, Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony's headquarters to Sony Music, a completely separate financial entity owned by Sony, so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project (which helped lead to the creation of the DVD).
Nintendo was very public about its scepticism toward using CD's and DVDs to store games, citing longer load times and durability issues. It was widely speculated that the company was even more concerned with the proprietary cartridge format's ability to help enforce copy protection, given its substantial reliance on licensing and exclusive titles for its revenue. Piracy was rampant on the PlayStation due to the relative ease of the installation of a modchip allowing the PlayStation to play games region free or recorded on a regular CD-R making the console very attractive to programmers and illegal copiers.
Even while working with Nintendo, within Sony, gaming was still regarded as a fad. Despite this hostile atmosphere to video games, Kutaragi managed to persuade Norio Ohga into making two devices, a SNES add-on, the SNES-CD and a Sony branded console, which could play both SNES-CD games and Nintendo cartridges. These efforts resulted in a device called the "Play Station", a console that would be compatible with both Super Famicom games and software released on a new format called the SuperDisc. Eventually, the partnership between Sony and Nintendo faltered due to licensing disagreements, but Kutaragi and Sony continued to develop their own console. Kutaragi later recalled staying up all night working on the console design for several nights in a row "because our work was so interesting." Despite being considered a risky gamble by other Sony executives, Kutaragi once again had the support of Norio Ohga and several years later the company released the original PlayStation. The success of the PlayStation led to him heading up the development of more consoles like the PlayStation 2, and its successor, the PlayStation 3.
Nintendo was the last to release a fifth generation console with their Nintendo 64, and when they finally released their console in North America, it came with only two launch titles. Partly to curb piracy and partly as a result of Nintendo's failed disc projects with Sony (as SNES-CD) and Philips, Nintendo used cartridges for their console. The higher cost of cartridges drove many third party developers to the PlayStation. The Nintendo 64 could handle 3D polygons better than any console released before it, but its games often lacked the cut-scenes, soundtracks, and voice-overs that became standard on PlayStation discs. Nintendo released several highly acclaimed titles, such as Super Mario 64 and , and the Nintendo 64 was able to sell tens of millions of units on the strength of first-party titles alone, but its constant struggles against Sony would make the Nintendo 64 the last home console to use cartridges as a medium for game distribution until the Nintendo Switch in 2017.