PlayStation,Nintendo, andXboxall have a reputation, whether it’s earned or not. PlayStation is known for its big, cinematic games full of action and emotional stories; Nintendo is known for its family-friendly games and colorful platformers full of creativity and wonder;and Xbox is known for being Xbox. I’ll let you decide what that means.
On the surface, that would imply that Nintendo consoles are for kids, while PlayStation consoles are for the full-grown taxpayer, but we know that it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s true that Nintendo does cater more towards younger audiences though, and I can guarantee that more people were introduced to gaming via Nintendo consoles than PlayStation or Xbox.
One person that also recognizes this is former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida, who credits Nintendo with “bringing a younger audience into gaming” ona recent episode of the Kit and Crysta podcast. In the episode, he talks a little bit about how Sony perceives Nintendo, claiming that there’s a “huge respect” between the two, but the latter hopes that it can scoop up their fans when they get older.
Ex-PlayStation Boss Hopes Nintendo Fans Move Onto “More Mature Systems”
“Nintendo is bringing a younger audience into gaming, and some of them, when they grow up, might graduate into more mature systems like PlayStation or Xbox,” says Yoshida. “Of course, they have huge respect for what Nintendo does in terms of how Nintendo should be doing in the industry. We all felt like it’s great to have Nintendo to continue to be successful so that we can continue to grow the industry.”
It’s kind of fascinating to hear how Sony actually views Nintendo, treating them as more of an incubator for future customers rather than outright competition. Yoshida even goes as far as claiming that Sony even leaves Nintendo out of business analysis when comparing consoles. That’s just how much it considers Nintendo as a company in a completely different audience to the one that it’s working in.
It’s also rather ironic considering thatPlayStation’s biggest success of the past five years was Astro Bot, so maybe the platform could take a leaf out of Nintendo’s book and get a little less “mature”. I’m still waiting for those Ape Escape and Jak & Daxter reboots PlayStation.
