Ohga Shrugs

The PlayStation brand is an oddity in video game history. Whereas Nintendo entered the video game console market as an outgrowth of their involvement in the toys industry, and Microsoft got involved to protect their multimedia interests, Sony got involved due to a grudge.

In 1991, Nintendo and Sony had made a deal to collaborate on a CD-ROM attachment for the then-new SNES. When Nintendo embarrassed Sony by backing out of the deal without telling them first, Sony's president Norio Ohga was so outraged that he provided the funding to create a new console to compete with them.

This timeline asks the question "What if Ohga shrugged it off?"

Enter a world where video gaming is still a largely niche hobby, where Sega and Nintendo remain the dueling masters of the market, where series like Gran Turismo and Gears of War never existed, where the relatively obscure franchises like Mother have become big names, where Final Fantasy was a Nintendo exclusive for two decades.

Welcome to Ohga Shrugs.