Does anyone here have a 3DS?|Page 3|General Gaming Discussion|Forum|SNES HUB

The boardroom is not a nursery. There is ALWAYS opposition and discussion of direction. This does not mean that the optimal (and often only) path is not already layed out. Opposition, and yet they moved forward? Does that not tell you something?

Even if the details were not hammered out entirely, they had already spent considerable money and resources. AND LABOR, which you can never get back.

Yes, there is always a choice.

Option A: You “cut your losses” and do not put out the playstation, wasting all that time and money. You are guaranteed a loss.

Option B: You finish the project and you may lose money, but you may make money.

It is simple as that. The choice between a guaranteed loss, and a possible loss. And Possible wins out every time .

If you would like to call that a choice, then sure.

Oh and here is what was actually said in the article:

And it’s a vision that rose out from the rubble of a very public disaster. At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony revealed to the world a videogame console on which it had jointly worked with Nintendo. This SNES with a built-in CD-ROM drive was a project driven by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who had come out of its hardware engineering division. It was to be Nintendo’s route into a brave new world of multimedia, and a way for Kutaragi to show his company how important the videogame industry could be. But the very day after Sony’s announcement, Nintendo declared that it would be breaking its deal with Sony by partnering with Philips instead.

This humiliating turnabout enraged Sony president Norio Ohga, but though it seemed sudden from the outside, problems had been boiling between the two companies for some time. The main issue was an agreement over how revenue would be collected – Sony had proposed to take care of money made from CD sales while Nintendo would collect from cartridge sales, and suggested that royalties would be figured out later.

But Ohga was dead set on remaining in the game. At the end of a July meeting to plan litigation against Nintendo, he declared defiantly: “We will never withdraw from this business. Keep going.” And so Kutaragi went to work with strong support from the very top of Sony. “Ken brought together a handful of engineers that had come out of a broadcast and professional realtime 3D graphics engine called System-G,” explains Phil Harrison, who joined Sony in September 1992 to start its European game publishing business, and would eventually go on to become president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. System-G was a special-effects computer that broadcasters could use to augment live broadcasts with 3D images in realtime. “Technologically, that’s not really a million miles away from videogames, but this was a super high-end workstation. And Ken’s big vision was to take that, apply it in high volume and bring it into the home,” recalls Harrison.

In May that year, Sony finally put a stop to negotiations, and whether or not it should retain the project was decided at a pivotal meeting chaired by Ohga on June 24. The great majority of those present opposed it, but Kutaragi nevertheless revealed that he’d been developing a proprietary CD-ROM-based system capable of rendering 3D graphics, specifically for playing videogames – not multimedia. When Ohga asked what sort of chip it would require, Kutaragi replied that it would need one million gate arrays, a number that made Ohga laugh: Sony’s production of the time could only achieve 100,000. But Kutaragi slyly countered with: “Are you going to sit back and accept what Nintendo did to us?” The reminder enraged Ohga all over again. “There’s no hope of making further progress with a Nintendo-compatible 16bit machine,” he said. “Let’s chart our own course.”

The bold is editorializing by edge, who threw these little snippets in WITHOUT A QUOTE OR SHRED OF EVIDENCE THAT THAT WAS HOW HE FELT.

Watch how this already bad editorializing gets worse. Wikipedia takes it and says this:

The breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga, who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of developing of the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo.^[16]

At that time, negotiations were still on-going between Nintendo and Sony, with Nintendo offering Sony a “non-gaming role” regarding their new partnership with Philips. This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his work with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony. Negotiations officially ended in May 1992 and in order to decide the fate of the PlayStation project, a meeting was held in June 1992, consisting of Sony President Ohga, PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony’s board. At the meeting, Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board. Eventually, Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo. Nevertheless, due to strong opposition from a majority present at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives, Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony’s headquarters to Sony Music, a completely separate financial entity owned by Sony, so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project (which helped lead to the creation of the DVD).

This is deliberate misstatement. He gave the green light because”We will never withdraw. Keep going”, “there is no hope now of a Nintendo partnership”. “We will chart our own course”. There is nothing in either article to back up the bold of an enraged Ohga.

Seriously. This is not credible. I’m sorry, but it’s not….. lets just call this Incredible Hulk Ogha what it is-speculation.

Thank you for reminding me why I do not read anything these game journalists shit out….

MASSIVELY OFF-TOPIC

I’m really starting to get fed up with what constitutes Journalism these days. The 24-hour News cycle has really not done us any favors. People can just say shit and assume shit stuff words and emotions into people. And this disinformation spreads and gets even worse as it strays farther from it’s source.

This is why I do not look at this noise. I view the business as the objective reality.

In other words, Sales equal Quality, There are no “interpretations” to what people do and say, and the way business works is not an opinion. This is not a concept you will see typically shared in gaming message forums or in Gaming articles which typically focuses on personal opinions about games And that’s fine-the way it is meant to be. But we aren’t talking about games here. We are talking business. And this seems to be where these shithead “journalists” go awry. You cannot look at Business with the same lens as your Hypeup game articles.

An example of this is Nintendo, who keeps making games like Pikmin. It has its fans. However, I am looking at it from a business perspective. Pikmin 1 and 2 didn’t sell that well and certainly didn’t sell the Gamecube. Therefore, I can predict that Pikmin 3 will not sell well and will not push the Wii U hardware. Like clockwork, Pikmin 3 goes down in flames. This raises the question of, “Why did Nintendo make it in the first place?”

It may sound like I am giving a ‘commanding conclusion’, but the truth is that I am just viewing this through the lens of business. Game companies. Their objective is to not ‘do what they want (I’m MAD and must CRUSH NINTENDO, business DO NOT work like that) Their objective is to create profit. What is there to discuss about that? How does “I’M MAD, crush Nintendo” seem more reasonable than “Let’s put out the concept that you’ve already spent money and labor on”?

It must just be a fundamental disconnect. I truly did not realize that “Necessity Dictates” was controversial until I began posting on these forums, because in the business world this is not an alien concept. It tends to be the reality more often than not.This business context seems to be completely absent from most gaming circles, and I blame a lot of that on these Game “Journalists”.

Most game analysts don’t even examine the 80s, or early 90s periods of gaming. They only start when the PlayStation 1 came out. This is the chief reason why all the analysts were blind to the Wii Phenomenon. Nintendo intentionally copied Atari’s marketing of the 1980s (showing the enjoyment of people playing games instead of the games themselves). Wii Sports Tennis matches how people responded to PONG as well. It was easy follow the business context when it says, “The potential for Wii is very, very strong and could create a phenomenon like the market creating consoles of the NES.” When Wii shot off, people were looking for answers as to ‘how?’ or ‘why?’ Because the Game Journalists have zero business acumen, and they were fucking wrong, that’s why.

The point to these shithead analysts and journalists is this: business is not up for debate The raw truth is that most journalists aren’t qualified to discuss business. Do these journalists read business literature or do they read gaming message forums for fun? One is substantial while the other is garbage. Which is okay if thats what you do. An example I run into often is gamers running around talking about, say, The Last Of Us as if it were fucking Shakespeare, and to them it probably is. Why? because the “journalists”, who are as unqualified to say what a good story is as they are to explain business said so? Fuck, They DONT EVEN BUY THE FUCKING GAMES, AND THEY GET TO TELL YOU WHETHER ITS WORTH SIXTY DOLLARS?!? Where does this make sense?

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There. Rant Over. Rushdawg, We have great discussions because you have the same context as I do, just through a different lens.I get what you are saying about Even CEO’s being Human Beings with feelings, and if I was in his shoes I would be pissed. But we can’t just assume that, especially based on the word of a wikipedia interpretation of some sensationalist shithead who can’t do anything else except write editorialized bilge.   

That said, I will look for some evidence to back that up. Like I said, I’ll even take hearsay form people who were there. But not this……

Though Opportunity Cost is an important factor to consider, I have observed that the larger the company (and it’s resources), the less this rule is observed. My old company had tremendous resources at it’s disposal, and only used opportunity cost analysis as a small bullet-point instead of a primary factor. By contrast my new enterprise is ruled by tradeoff analyses since scarcity demands it. I’d wager that Sony is in the former.

Sunk Cost is ALWAYS important, but to say that whenever sunk costs are considered in decisions that it is a bad thing is something that I have disagreed with for a long time. It is human nature to want to regain money, and while there is always the potential to “throw good money after bad”, a proper business analysis involving other factors (Future costs, blowback, probability of success,industry outlook, competition, and economic climate) can alleviate this considerably.

That is most likely where the “discussion” occurred. From reading between the horseshit, It seems to me that much of the discussion was being done by executives on the side. As I am now positive you are in business I will assume you know how the boardroom operates. CEOs have full power to set direction. Sure they listen and take advice, I never said otherwise. But there are always factions within, and the CEO may be sympathetic  to one side or the other based on his personal outlook. By my observations, Ohga was intent on entering this industry. Pure speculation, but Ever since saving Katuragi’s ass during the SNES sound chip saga,  I have seen a pattern in Ohga’s business dealings, one that leads to the playstation. He seemed to want a partnership, but it’s dissolution did not stop him from entering the game market, which at the time was growing tremendously. If the decsion had not already been made, why was Katuragi ALREADY working on the project prior to that 1992 meeting (and after Nintendo had already pulled out)? I am sure that upper management had misgivings. That is their job. The CEO’s job is to see the future. TO USE THEIR CRYSTAL BALL, in this case their knowledge of business and instincts. To be a CEO you must SEE THE FUTURE and be correct most of the time.

That’s the stakes in executive level business. That is why executives make so much money. good ones deserve every penny of it.         

Finally we have been down this road before. There is always a choice. In general I just seem to see choice as much more limited than you make it out to be, since I accept that necessity is the motivator to human behavior. You have choice, but how many of us exercise that choice unless a series of events spurs us to action(and by then the choices number considerably less)? Human nature is founded on inaction until our back is against a wall. Political, military and business mindsets accept this, and history is full of examples. 

At the ultimate heart of this is how much has Human nature changed over the years?

2Ds Rocks just as much as DS did! Thank you for listening, Nintendo!