Given the contemporary examples, they weren’t wrong to think so. Everyone was trying to make a console in the 16/32-bit era.
- PC Engine/Turbografx
- Phillips CD-i (only sorta a console)
- Atari Jaguar
- Neo Geo
- Amiga CD
Some of these are better than others–I’m fond of the PC Engine–but none can be called successful. Neo Geo is somewhat of an exception because it was used as arcade hardware. Some others here are the butt of jokes. There’s also a bunch of Japanese consoles around this time that go nowhere, and are little more than fodder for retro gaming YouTube channels.
Sony took a big gamble and won.
Sega Saturn and Dreamcast also probably factored in. They weren’t nearly as successful as the Genesis. With even established brands floundering it’s no wonder people didn’t think the Playstation would work.
Not really. Just Sega CD. The PlayStation and the Saturn both came out in 1994 so they were directly competing with each other. The Dreamcast didn’t come out until 1998, after the PlayStation was already successful.
Easy to forget both Sony and Microsoft had nothing to do with gaming previously. Even MS had terrible inroads in spite of games for PC being written in DirectX.
I felt like Amazon and Google had pretty good chances. It was only due to terrible direction both managed to screw it up.
Feels like they want it to fail sometimes
They’re no Microsoft …
I mean, Nintendo believed in them, until that failed.
That was because Nintendo went behind Sonys back on the deal. They were trying to eat both pies.
But also because Sony was trying to claim a bigger slice of the pie from CD game sales. It’s both companies being shitty.
Gamers did too… Sony’s track record prior to the PS1 wasn’t great:
https://www.gamesdatabase.org/list.aspx?publisher=sony_computer_entertainment&system=sega_cd
