In the early '90s, Nintendo and Sony collaborated on a console featuring Super NES hardware combined with a Sony-designed CD-ROM drive. Informally known as the Nintendo PlayStation, it would become an infamous bit of gaming lore, with Nintendo ditching the collaboration at the last minute to instead partner with Philips.
The partnership between Nintendo and Philips would ultimately result in a handful of terrible games for the doomed CD-i platform featuring characters like Mario and Zelda. Sony, meanwhile, would take the idea for PlayStation and turn it into an all-new console, cementing itself as a central pillar of the games industry in the process.
"It was almost helpful that Nintendo cancelled the project – otherwise the Sony team would have been stuck as part of a Nintendo system," former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida tells GamesIndustry.biz (via Time Extension).
Nintendo's eventual entry into 3D gaming with the N64 would give us games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – all-time classics whose influence on the medium is still felt today. The original PlayStation would still more than triple the N64 in sales, and set Sony on the path toward dominating the console space for generations to come. I think that probably does count as "almost helpful."
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