Gaming History: How influencial was the PS1?

What If Sony Never Got in the Game? - Retro feature - at IGN

This article is nearly a year old, but I see this argument all the time. Playstation named as the best console of all time. Playstation so influential in Video Game history. What would have have done without Sony. To me, this seems like a whole load of Sony fanboy bull. The largest of the Sony fanboys are 25+ year old men, as when they were teens the PS1 was launched. It was also aimed at them, as Sony looked for an older target market. So I always feel the bias from these writers is because Sony is their console through and through.

Now I'll admit I'm a bit biased as well, but it's not because I owned Nintendo all the way down. I started with a Sega Genesis, moved to an N64 (my favorite system of all time), had a PS2/Gamecube, now this Gen I own em all. This is not counting handhelds.

Anyway the point of this is to say I've experienced a large varieties of the consoles, so my allegiance stands not with a single company. Now the reasons I disagree with the large influence of the PS1 are pretty simple. Except for a few staple games, the games sucked. Apart from FMV, the graphics sucked. N64 was straight up better, and gets way less credit.

PS1 is claimed to be the changer. It brought in CD's, but Sega did that first. It furthered RPGS, but Nintendo had already made FF popular. All Sony truly did was add competition. Sure Sega CD was a failure, and yeah N64 was a bit of the way off when Saturn was rushed to be launched, but that doesn't mean Sega couldn't recover. Maybe they wouldn't have worked on the Dreamcast, but to be honest it was a better console than the PS1 anyway. It's all based on speculations and what might have happened.

The article outlines a few points. The fact that Sega CD failed. The fact that Nintendo stiffed Sony on a CD extension for SNES. Sony's added competition forcing the early Saturn, and forcing its fail. Squares decision to move to Sony due to added space for FF.

When you look at these points, they don't show why PS1 is regarded as the "Best Console Ever", or even why it was that crucial. It was a large amount of things indirectly related to Sony's console that lead to an advancement in gaming. CD's were just coming into their own as audio devices around now, it's impossible to say but highly unlikely the future gaming consoles wouldn't have picked up on CD's, regardless of the PS1.

When it comes down to it, the same can be said for Microsoft. The Xbox added competition. It added internal harddrive, extra features, consoles acting more like computers, the revolution of Shooters and most importantly online play in consoles. Absolutely the most important thing in this generation is online capabilities. Every game has it, even just for DLC. Games are dominated by crappy shooter campaigns trying to be the next Halo multiplayer. This is one of the most successful generation yet with mainstream success and record sales. So is the original Xbox the best console ever because it forced this major advancement that lead to mainstream success? I highly doubt it. The Xbox may have forced both competitors to work on online play (neither of which have really been successful), it may have forced Nintendo off the hardcore gamer path into the family oriented path. It may have forced Sony to work on more advanced hardware, which has yet to be more successful than the other two consoles this generation. But I still don't see this reason to call the Xbox the best console ever, just because it revolutionized gaming. The same can be said for the PS1.

Anyway after that long winded post, what are your thoughts?