Fun fact! Sony wanted to screw over Nintendo not because they were screwed over by Nintendo, but because they were humiliated by Nintendo.
Sony was trying to screw Nintendo over in the first place, Nintendo realized it, pulled out, and Sony threw a hissy fit.
The tl;dr: is that Sony basically wanted distribution rights for IPs that were published on CDs. Nintendo initially thought Sony meant as in ‘we want to be able to distribute stuff published on CDs’ which makes sense… but Nintendo’s lawyers realized at the last second that Sony meant ‘Anything that is published on CD, we now own that IP’s distribution rights entirely’
As in, if a Zelda game was ever published on CD, Nintendo literally could not ever publish a Zelda game without Sony’s approval. Defacto ownership of the Zelda IP, though not actual ownership.
Considering Nintendo was literally currently dealing with Sony extorting them over the dev kits for the Sony sound chip in the SNES, Nintendo very wisely walked away from that, and pivoted to Philips. (Sony and Philips jointly created the CD standard.)
While the CD-I was obviously a failure, this whole thing was a MASSIVE embarrassment to Sony, because they had already been doing the industry equivalent of bragging about the deal (which they shouldn’t have been, because it wasn’t finalized yet). Them yapping about it is also how Nintendo’s lawyers realized that Sony was basically trying to do a hostile takeover of all of Nintendo’s IPs. Needless to say, Nintendo was (rightly, imo) pissed.
And then Sony had the gall to complain about Nintendo like THEY were the bad guys, setting a narrative for years.
Yeah, that’s why I brought up DACs and Betas (and linked the SNES CD article), Sony has been trying for decades to own the current popular format itself. What’s been funny to me is they finally succeeded with Blu-ray and now it’s not even been 20 years and they’re ready to throw in the towel. Even betas were manufactured for nearly 50 years and they lost their format war. What was even more embarrassing to Sony is not just that Sony and Phillips had jointly created the CD standard, it’s that Sony had had to deal with Phillips after losing to Phillips on cassettes and then again on DACs (Phillips version being the DCC, which in the end also lost to CD). As well Phillips was readily working with JVC who had made VHS.
Fun fact! Sony wanted to screw over Nintendo not because they were screwed over by Nintendo, but because they were humiliated by Nintendo.
Sony was trying to screw Nintendo over in the first place, Nintendo realized it, pulled out, and Sony threw a hissy fit.
The tl;dr: is that Sony basically wanted distribution rights for IPs that were published on CDs. Nintendo initially thought Sony meant as in ‘we want to be able to distribute stuff published on CDs’ which makes sense… but Nintendo’s lawyers realized at the last second that Sony meant ‘Anything that is published on CD, we now own that IP’s distribution rights entirely’
As in, if a Zelda game was ever published on CD, Nintendo literally could not ever publish a Zelda game without Sony’s approval. Defacto ownership of the Zelda IP, though not actual ownership.
Considering Nintendo was literally currently dealing with Sony extorting them over the dev kits for the Sony sound chip in the SNES, Nintendo very wisely walked away from that, and pivoted to Philips. (Sony and Philips jointly created the CD standard.)
While the CD-I was obviously a failure, this whole thing was a MASSIVE embarrassment to Sony, because they had already been doing the industry equivalent of bragging about the deal (which they shouldn’t have been, because it wasn’t finalized yet). Them yapping about it is also how Nintendo’s lawyers realized that Sony was basically trying to do a hostile takeover of all of Nintendo’s IPs. Needless to say, Nintendo was (rightly, imo) pissed.
And then Sony had the gall to complain about Nintendo like THEY were the bad guys, setting a narrative for years.
Yeah, that’s why I brought up DACs and Betas (and linked the SNES CD article), Sony has been trying for decades to own the current popular format itself. What’s been funny to me is they finally succeeded with Blu-ray and now it’s not even been 20 years and they’re ready to throw in the towel. Even betas were manufactured for nearly 50 years and they lost their format war. What was even more embarrassing to Sony is not just that Sony and Phillips had jointly created the CD standard, it’s that Sony had had to deal with Phillips after losing to Phillips on cassettes and then again on DACs (Phillips version being the DCC, which in the end also lost to CD). As well Phillips was readily working with JVC who had made VHS.