The Nintendo/Sony Marriage:
After
the crash of the video game market in 1983, Nintendo rebuilt the
industry with the Nintendo Entertainment System, quickly making them
into the dominating force of the video game industry. When developing
the Super Nintendo (SNES), their second cartridge-based console, they
signed a deal with Sony to supply the systems audio processor (the Sony
SPC700).
As Nintendo continued developing add-ons for the
SNES, including a short lived modem (Japan only), Sony was focusing on
its core business of technology and in 1986 they developed alongside
Philips Electronics a new kind of CD-ROM (called the CD-ROM/XA). The
new type of disc allowed compressed audio, video/graphics, and data to
run simultaneously. The original CD-ROM could contain audio, graphical
or data information, but could only run them independently. By
combining these three elements together games could use larger, more
advance graphics and audio that could be accessed by the data files all
off a single disk.
On the news of this hot new technology and
leveraging their existing relationship, Nintendo approached Sony to
start development on a CD-ROM add-on to the Super Nintendo, with plans
on making it Nintendo's first disc-based console. The deal was made in
1988 with Sony crafting the tech and Nintendo releasing the Play
Station expansion.
