Sony- It Only Does What Someone Else Innovates

We have seen much from Sony over the past 16 years that has come to revolutionize gaming. It is true that they expanded the industry from a kids' toy market to include a more sophisticated adult market. Many will give them credit for innovation, but has the innovation actually come from Sony? Were the ideas theirs? Or could it be that these ideas, one by one, have come from other companies, and Sony merely copies and improves them?

"Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you!"

In 1993 the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was introduced to the public. The philosophy behind the machine was simple: children who had grown up with NES, Genesis, and Super NES were now young adults and were ready to "graduate" to a more sophisticated system that had more mature content. 3D graphics, Dolby stereo sound, more intense action. "If you build it they will come." Oddly enough Sony also had this same scheme with the Playstation. Sony released the Playstation in 1995, and the 3DO became a casualty. But was the scheme something that the 2 companies both had at the same time, or did Sony see into the 3DO Company's vision and simply adopt and improve it? This is of course debatable. But certainly other situations may be more obvious.

The analog stick was not invented by Nintendo, and was first used on a mass scale by anyone playing on the Atari 2600, putting it at about 1977. But Nintendo was first to adopt a thumb-size stick on a control pad. Sony quickly answered with two sticks on their controller, which was then packed in with every Playstation. Sony's sticks were superior in design and ease-of-use, but were obviously a response to what Nintendo was doing.

Nintendo invented and owned the handheld market. Sony, wanting a piece of that, released their PSP. The design was strikingly similar to the design of the Game Boy Advance. Screen in the middle, buttons on either side, shoulder bumpers. The PSP was superior, obviously, with a bigger, brighter screen. The PSP laid waste to the Game Boy as far as technical specs, and performance. Anyone with a PSP could do more with the device than with a Game Boy Advance; music, video capabilities, Internet browsing, downloads, etc. But what would Sony's device have looked like had it not been for Nintendo's basic blueprint? Again I would have to say it was a matter of copying and improving an idea, rather than actual innovation.

Most recently Sony has copied the Wii remote, an idea I seriously doubt that Sony would have come up with on their own. They may say that they have been experimenting with such things for a long time prior, and certainly all video game hardware companies always have strange things going on in their Research and Development labs, but the similarities cannot be denied. Sony's Move is another idea that Sony did not initiate but merely took from elsewhere and improved technologically.

I will give credit where credit is due. Sony has done much to expand our beloved pastime and bring us fabulous and intense experiences. But innovation is not something that I feel the company deserves credit for. I would love to see Sony produce a machine that brings a whole new dimension to gaming just once. Something that the other companies madly scramble to copy and try to improve, because it was so unexpected and underestimated yet it managed to create a whole new kind of gaming experience. I am still waiting for them to do just that.