Shuki

Out of Tokyo this morning (mid-day in Japan) Nintendo has announced the move that could change gaming forever.

(Tokyo)- In an announcement early this morning, Nintendo and Sony executives announced that they had come to a legal agreement over the rights to the name 'Playstation'. The name, which was originaly given to a joint-venture CD rom based add-on for the Super Nintendo, was technically, a joint-owned copyright. Sony has agreed to pay Nintendo 10% of all past and future proceeds made off of the name. This ammounts to a whopping 2.3 billion USD in back-payments. Nintendo will allow Sony to pay the money back in installments instead of a lump sum over the next 20 years. However, Nintendo has plans for their new found source of income. They will immidietly finance a new game studio called 'The Artists Group' which will feature members of Sega, Nintendo, Namco, Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square-Enix and more to collaborate on projects for Nintendo systems, and exchange copyrighted properties. The first projects announced out of this new studio are a new RPG using various gaming icons as the central charachters, a new Smash Brothers game, featuring mascots from accross the companies, including Pacman, Megaman, Sonic, Mario and more, as well as a new Sega-AM2 developed racing game that will also feature multiple icons from the various companies. The final collaboration is the recently announced Viewtifull Joe from Capcom stuidios. Nintendo has also promised that completely original more collaborations between studios will take place in the future, but for now, they will be focusing on quality content showcasing the newfound bond between the various development houses. Contrary to internet rumors however, Nintendo has not as of yet purchased any software developers, and as such, all members of the Artists Group will be allowed to explore development on other systems of their own accord. More as it develops.

[UPDATED: Wednesday 2:17 18/12/2002]

http://www.consoletalk.com/News/FullStory.php?id=146

Static Cling

Ugh. I'd be so pissed off if I was one of the Sony higher-ups.

I know, that's not the megaton, but still.

Groucho

Guess this means there will be no "Playstation 3," Sony will probably call it something else.

Everything else is pretty exciting...looks like Nintendo has finally decided to take the gloves off.

retihsuhnt

I do believe Chris Tucker put it best in the original Friday, "damn."

Draven

Wow, savvy. They WANT the PS2 to be successful

I like the "collaboration" games too. Always neat to see some favorite characters show up from mulitiple developers.

PixyJunket

Any loss to Sony is a gain to gamers.

Mezzanine

Is ConsoleTalk a reliable site? IGN and GameSpot don't have anything about this, at least not yet.

Shuki

well when it was Nintendo and Sony they both knew where the other stood.... now MS has entered the game and shuffled things up a bit... That whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type thing maybe? or Japan vs. US type thing maybe? or maybe Shuki is full of #$@! maybe? Probably #3

Static Cling

Actually, since Sony provides games and consoles to gamers, it's the other way around.

First the comment in the Playstation5 thread, now this... did Sony kill your family or something?

goLUCKY

More crossovers would be cool!

el_jer

I don't believe this until I see it in the financial press. Nothing on Rueters or AP. You would think this would be a signifigant event to shareholders.

I would be shocked if a trade journal picked up on this information faster but strange things do happen.

Liver&Onions

I'm been hunting for something official...and nothing. Hmmm.....

zig

This rumor was started a couple weeks ago.. looks to me like these guys are just picking it up when every console fan site in existence is trying to find out what this non-existent megaton is. I'll believe when I see something more official.

young

well, playstation... not PSOne or PS2, right? if so, doesn't seem like much of a loss for sony. just rebadge everything that still has Playstation on it and say PS = PlaySony...

PixyJunket

I personally feel that Sony is responisble for the watered down video game era we are stuck in at the moment. Perhaps it's just that I grew up in such a wonderful age of video games (Nintendo and Super Nintendo era) and that I'm clinging to that past, or perhaps I have valid arguments. It's no secret that when the Playstation came out, Sony's stance was "We don't care about the quality of the games, as long as there are as many as possible being put out." The designer for the Resident Evil games recently came out stating that they purposely make thier systems as cheap as possible so that consumer will have the rebuy the hardware. Wheter there is any truth in that is speculation, but ANYBODY that has own a Playstation 1 knows for damn sure that's it's highly possible. I can list over a dozen people I know personally that have faulty Playstation consoles, and the ones I know that have fine working machines either recently bought (or re-bought) it, or never use the thing. Take the sheer numbers of software that they threw out at people along with thier "I'm an MTV kid" advertising campaign and they successfully brought a sub-culture once considered an exclusive for "Geeks and Freaks" into the mainstream. Depending on your viewpoint, this may or may not be a bad thing.

Now, I'm not saying that every video game on the SNES was great. Far from it. There have been crappy games from the Atari 2600 and up. But back then, developers didn't have "flashy" graphics or "YOU ARE LEET AND EXTREME IF YOU PLAY OUR VIDEO GAMES DOOD!!" commericals backde by music from whatever cookie-cutter band is popular this week to brainwash thousands of people to shell out money to them. They had to make software that was entertaing. Sony's Playstation has what.. over 2000 game titles for it, and maybe 20 of them are even close to being as inventive and memorable gaming experinces as some of Nintendo's AAA+ titles from the SNES days. And the ones that are typically copies of those.. (Castlevania:SOTN -> Super Metroid, anybody?) or just happened to end up on the system because there wasn't anything else to develop for (Sega's supieor Saturn being smashed by Sony's $$$ and Nintendo's N64 being impractical and expensive to develop for). Add that the companies that are trying to focus on quality games and products (Nintendo, and bless thier hearts, Sega) are being **** on by a flood of games that cater to people who are brainwashed by whatever commericals they see on TV and follow whatever some magazine or TV show tells them is "HOT AND POPULAR" this week!

So, the reason I think this is beautiful news because this extra funding to Nintendo will obviosuly be used to develop AAA titles instead of AAA commercials.

Young Vito

Honestly, i just think pixyboi is just a nintendo loyalist whos heart has been smashed and feelings hurt after the last truly successfull Nintendo home console was the SNES

The Sony bashing is obvious here.. i mean come on..honestly...i personally feel that the psone was one of the best systems ever (mgs, syphon filter, re series and many more)

young

the conspiracy paranoid in me thinks the top brass at sony is really just giving some much needed cash to nintendo... to stave off xbox... but that's just crazy talk, right?

Liver&Onions

the PSx was a good system. Good games, but a million more horrible ones. But it did create more competition which IMO was exactly what the VG industry needed.

PixyJunket

Not really bashing the PSone itself rather than Sony. I do own a Playstation and a number of games. And I'm nowhere near a Nintendo loyaist as I think the N64 is one of the worst systems created and I have no desire to buy a Gamecube. (yet).

Kellehair

Yep. Nintendo's already had boatloads of cash.

I think there might be something more to this than just the fight over the name. I bet Nintendo felt they deserved some share of the profits from the PSX since they helped make it. Sony might have actually gotten off easy here. I could be wrong but this type of thing has happened before in other industries (MS and Apple anyone?).

PixyJunket

Yes, competition is being created NOW. Which is good. However, what competition was there from about 1996-2000? The Dreamcast, which easily should've buried the PSX, died a miserable (tho honorable) death and nobody is still quite sure how Nintendo didn't go bankrupt from the N64.

gcribbs

This is a great time in the video game industry. I think you are looking at older games with very rose colored glasses. Sure there are bad games being released however there are also great games being released.

Sony has done alot for the industry by making it more mainstream. Nintendo was clinging to cartridges when sony moved to cdroms.

Nintendo makes some great games. Sony actually has also.

Sure the PS1 had a bunch of games released for it however that was because the system sold so many units that developers wanted a piece of the pie. They passed on Nintendo due to higher costs associated with cartridges and the far smaller installed base.

The PS2 gets more games because it has a far larger installed base. No other reason. Trust me the other console makers would love to have the games released on their console. They do not get them due to lower installed bases which equals to lower sales for smaller titles.

If the XBox or GC had huge sales and the PS2 was lagging behind guess where the huge amount of those bad games would be going- not to the PS2.

Those not as good games must make a small amount of money or else they would not be made so I guess someone either likes them or at least buys them.

By the way I think this is not true. Until I see it from a major site I will not believe that this many years later that this would finally happen.

Kellehair

I know how they didn't. They sold about 35 million N64s and almost every 1st party game was at least a million seller. Plus they made some good money off of every 3rd party game sold.

gcribbs

The fact that Nintendo was stupid and stayed with the more expensive cartridge based system is exactly why the N64 failed to ever grow into a huge console. Developers stayed away since it was too expensive to release a game when the installed base was so small in comparison to the PS1. Had they moved to a cdrom based sytem with the N64 at least the developers could have saved money on costs and might have released a few more games for the N64 system.

Sega just plain blew that whole generation. They were the King with the Genesis and the released a bunch of systems 32x ,sega cd, saturn. when they finally got to the Dreamcast no wonder no one thought they would stick with it.

Sony had nothing to do with it at all.

Sony was a bit lucky they released a good sytem with a cheap method of making games(cd's) and both their competitors made mistakes that helped Sony.

Why get mad at Sony for that?

huh?

that has got to be the most ignorant thing posted in a while... nintendo made a profit from the N64, what are you talking about?