Modern console gaming owes a lot to Nintendo, and it goes without saying that much of what we see in today’s hardware (and even software) has its roots in things that were pioneered and/or perfected by the Japanese behemoth. Iteration evolution is, of course, very important in this industry (or any industry, for that matter), but Sony in particular have almost had a habit over the years of “borrowing” many of the Big N’s ideas. Not to cast aspersions on the huge successes Sony has achieved with a lot of what it’s done, but this is a pattern that has been noticed by countless people for over two decades. In a lot of these cases, Sony, to their credit, actually improved heavily upon what they were “copying”, but, well- copy they did. In this feature, we’re going to take a look at ten times when Sony was, let’s say “heavily inspired” by stuff Nintendo had already done.
PLAYSTATION CLASSIC
Let’s kick thing off with the most recent example. While Microsoft has been making strides with backwards compatibility, other leaders in the hardware market ave instead chosen to release classic versions of older consoles. Nintendo kicked off this trend with the NES Classic and the SNES Classic, mini, portable-sized versions of the pieces of hardware that came pre-installed with a library of some of their best games. Quite recently, Sony announced its own take on the concept- except it wasn’t really their own take. From the name to the general core ideas to even the images that were used to promote its announcement, the PlayStation Classic is a hilariously obvious replica of what Nintendo has been doing for a few years now.
