Former Sony exec reflects on original talks with Nintendo for cancelled SNES PlayStation
Not too long ago, Polygon was able to speak with Shigeo Maruyama. Maruyama was previously the chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment and the CEO of Sony Music Entertainment. He was present way back in the day when negotiations were taking place with Nintendo about working on a gaming system together.
As we know, Nintendo and Sony’s partnership wasn’t meant to be. Nintendo went in its own direction, as did Sony. Maruyama reflected on those initial conversations with Nintendo in a recent interview with Polygod, in which he stated:
“When we started talking with Nintendo about collaborating, the original Famicom was already on the market. We were shown an early version of the Super Famicom … but the Super Famicom was nothing more than a toy. There was tremendous potential in the product, obviously, but it was just a toy. As a major electronics company, Sony’s standpoint was, “Why would we be making a toy?”
When Nintendo was working on the Super Famicom, Kutaragi went to Nintendo asking if Sony could collaborate with Nintendo. Kutaragi’s proposal was that Nintendo shift from making games on cartridges to making them on CD-ROMs. Nintendo’s response was that it was faster for cartridges to start the game. With CD-ROMs, when it was demonstrated to Nintendo at the time, I don’t know specifically, but it took around 20 to 30 seconds for the game to load. But with cartridges there’s almost no delay to start a game. Nintendo said that kids can’t wait that long for a game to start.
So, Kutaragi countered with a proposal of a system that took both the cartridge on top with a CD-ROM drive on the bottom. Nintendo agreed to this and at one point they decided to move forward with this idea.”
Kutaragi said that it was imagined as a hybrid, and he said that if Nintendo went through with it, “it would have been a lot easier for me.” That’s because he could have continued focusing “more of my career on music instead of spending 10 years developing the gaming division of the company.”
Thanks to Jake for the tip.
