Nintendo versus Sony: The Race Between the Consoles (Part 2)
At Doodle, we value the collaboration that comes from great meetings. That’s why we do what we do. We also think healthy competition can contribute to great innovations in life. In this series, we explore some of the most exciting technology rivalries in history.
While Nintendo has been focusing on home entertainment for decades, Sony entered that field relatively late, but definitely not without a bang. Let’s start from the beginning.
Once upon a time in Tokyo
Even the giants start small, and the history of what is now the Sony Corporation is one fascinating example of this. It all started in post-war Japan, in 1946, when Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita established their Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. With just 190,000 yen as a starting capital and a small team of approximately 20 employees, these two men were ready “to do what has never been done before.”
And they surely did: from a rice cooker, one of their less successful projects, they moved to introducing the first tape recorder in Japan, and their breakthrough came in the 1950s with TR-63, the then world’s smallest portable transistor radio. What other portable devices that have revolutionized the world has Sony developed? Oh, you know, just something even the younger readers must recognize (from movies at least?): the Walkman. Released in 1979, this iconic device has earned its №3 on the Most Influential Gadgets and Gizmos list by the Time magazine (interestingly, Nintendo’s Game Boy is №6 on that same list). The same year, together with Philips, a Dutch tech giant, Sony co-developed the world’s first CD, which was, needless to say, a big deal. It also plays an important role in the Sony vs Nintendo rivalry.
Sony, Nintendo and…wait, what is Philips doing here?
Although we tend to see Sony and Nintendo as rivals these days, their relationship would probably look very different but for an awkward incident that happened in the 1990s. Essentially, Nintendo had asked Sony to develop an external CD-ROM drive to go with its Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) console, but, when the project was already underway, started having second thoughts about this collaboration. The assumption here is that Nintendo was afraid that Sony would have too much access to Nintendo’s inner works and too much power over the deal in general, and could soon enter the home entertainment field itself. Long story short, Nintendo ditched Sony and announced to the world that they were going with Philips instead (ouch!). Interestingly enough, that plan didn’t go that well for Nintendo, but it did push Sony into developing its own console, something you might have heard of: PlayStation. PlayStation 1 was released in 1994 and was an instant hit, and to this day the PlayStation 2, launched six years later, remains the best-selling console of all time with over 155 million units sold. Sony has surely used Nintendo’s original slap in the face to its benefit.
How was Nintendo doing at that time? Not that great: its N64 console, released in 1996, never reached the sales that any of the PlayStation releases saw. It took Nintendo a decade to make its comeback with the hand-held Nintendo DS in 2004 and with Wii in 2006.
And the winner is…
Without going into subjective and potentially endless debates over which console is the best, we should all agree that Sony entering the home entertainment industry has brought a lot of excitement (also sleepless nights, missed deadlines, and lots of unplanned snacking) to millions around the world. The end result of this rivalry between Sony and Nintendo was incredible for its users, who are definitely the real winners in this game.
And still, I’d say companies that started with malfunctioning rice cookers and gambling cards and met as established tech leaders decades later deserve a round of applause (so put those consoles down for a second).
The rivalry between technology companies is first of all a rivalry between brilliant minds. Having brought amazing innovations to both our households (link to Tesla vs Edison) and to space itself (link to Bezos vs Musk), these minds are certainly exciting to follow.
By Justina Poskeviciute
Justina is an awesome writer living in Budapest.
