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PlayStation Didn't Consider Nintendo To Be A True Competitor, And Here's Why
According to a former PlayStation executive, Sony did not consider Nintendo to be a true competitor in markets outside of Japan, with the company putting its focus squarely on Xbox instead.
Shuhei Yoshida, who worked at PlayStation for nearly 30 years before stepping down this year, said on the Kit & Krysta podcast that PlayStation's "perception of their competition is always Xbox. They see Microsoft being the competition because Xbox is very similar in terms of performance hardware."
Microsoft makes a "high-end" console with "mature" games like Sony does, Yoshida says, and Nintendo was seen as "very, very different" by Sony.
"Nintendo is family friendly; games for everyone; not about technology, more about having fun with friends and families and always having multiple controllers bundled with the hardware. So inside Sony, even when they do a business analysis, Nintendo doesn't show up. They don't include Nintendo," he said.
Yoshida said Sony was not purposefully ignoring Nintendo when it came to the competitive landscape, but instead Sony saw Nintendo as appealing to a different type of audience.
"They do not necessarily feel that Nintendo is the competition because Nintendo is covering a different audience on a bigger scale. Nintendo is bringing a young audience into gaming; and some of them when they grow up, might graduate to more mature systems like PlayStation or Xbox," he said.
Yoshida went on to say he understood from Sony management that the company always had "huge respect" for Nintendo, adding that Sony higher-ups liked to see Nintendo doing well because it brought more people into gaming overall.
The one market where Sony did see Nintendo as a main competitor was Japan, Yoshida said, and that's because Xbox historically does not perform well in Japan. "But outside Japan, PlayStation people clearly see Xbox as the primary competition," he said.
In related news, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Hideaki Nishino was recently asked about the Switch 2's record-breaking launch, and the executive did not sound very concerned.
The Switch 2 debuted to 3.5 million global sales right out of the gate, and the system sold more than the previous record-holder in the US, which was Sony's PS4.
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