Game News 2.0

The PS360 era would have been a pretty bleak time for games if it wasn't for indie really taking it off and making it exciting. Saying that there were still some incredible games from that era that are well worth going back to, and that's not even including the Wii and DS catalogues that were also great. Metal Gear Rising, Bayonetta, Dark Souls, Portal, X-Com, Dishonored, Arkham asylum. Lots of great games that are still very playable (well if you play them on PC or later XBox, some do have horrendous performance issues).

That and Symphony of the Night.

Nah, it was always going to be big. Each generation it has been getting bigger and bigger. They just kind of made it a little more acceptable to college aged kids but kids and teenagers were always the bigger market. Clever marketing alright but gaming was always going to get an older demography as the demograph aged.

Sony kind of just copied Sega but did it exceptionally well. Atari and NES was for kids, Sega recognised those kids were now teenagers so marketed towards them with Sega does what Nindon't and cyber razorcut. Sony recognised that those teenagers were now in their early 20's.

And if you make things cool for the older kids/adults then the younger demograph is going to really want it even more.

There's other factors to consider. Sega were definitely going after that demographic as well just Sony out did them and their Sony music connections were a massive boon to them. Also we only saw the Sony Europe marketing campaign which admittedly was one of the best marketing campaigns of all time. The Sony America campaign was very different and more along the lines of what Sega did with the Megadrive.

As for Nintendo, they were copying Sega badly with their play it loud campaign to try and keep the SNES relevant. Nintendo's biggest issue wasn't marketing. It was they were so late to the party with the N64 and lost so much support. They definitely weren't going after the pre-teen market but when the N64 was doing so badly that had to double down on that pokemon connection to try and stay relevant. Nintendo were actually pushing hard after the teenager/early twenties demograph with a lot of mature titles (shadowman, Turok etc.) and western developer partners.

Retronauts have said it as well, the market was always going towards including the early twenty year olds now and all three publishers knew it, especially after the success of Sega with the megadrive. Sony's incredible marketing was what captured the majority of that market.

I do think Sony brought in a few older people that would have become lapsed gamers with the PS1 but I don't think their marketing campaign created a brand new demograph. It's more that they completely dominated it with a great product and exceptional marketing. But I feel they still captured a core gamer market rather than creating a brand new one.

In a way nintendo might have more of a claim to creating a bigger demograph with the Wii and DS getting a lot more people into games that normally wouldn't. But you could also argue the same for the PS2 with it's DVD drive, eyetoy and general ubiquity and mobile gaming.

Not sure that was really Sony again, more so Sony where the clear leaders and totally ubiquitous in the console space when the market coalesced into the modern gaming market (which I'd say would have happened in the PS2 era).

But if you look at competitors like the Xbox and GameCube they were pretty much the same as the ps2 and on PC which was fairly separate from the console market at the time it was heading in the same direction with little input from Sony.

I'd put more stock behind Sony changing the landscape with the ps1 than creating the modern gaming space.