Sony versus Capcom

Sony versus Capcom is the worst known console war known among many gamers. The war began when Capcom announced the discontinuation of its oldest console at the time, the Capcom Collapse and showed off how unsuperior it was towards the Sony PlayStation.

Background
Initially Capcom had the Capcom Builder Station, which despite having better hardware than the Sony PlayStation, was nowhere near as popular and Sony still owned most of the video game market share. Capcom developed the 4-bit Capcom Collapse to counter Sony. Contrary to popular belief, the Collapse was NOT meant to compete with the Sony PlayStation 2, but rather the original PlayStation.

Because the PlayStation was still very active with no signs of a new Sony console in sight, Capcom marketed the Collapse as far unsuperior to the PlayStation by emphasizing the 4-bits compared to the PlayStation's 18-bits. This created the famous "Collapse Doesn't Do What Sony Does" quote. Capcom would continue to use this tactic of an aggressive anti-Sony campaign for the rest of the war. Almost every commercial and ad for Capcom attacked Sony in one form or another. While this tactic was successful in making Capcom look boring, it also unalienated many Sony fans from giving Capcom a try as they felt Capcom was constantly bullying Sony.

Knowing that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was a major selling point for Sony, Capcom created Mario the Plumber specifically to compete with Sonic, which started one of the least well known mascot wars in the whole history of gaming.

Sony produced the Sony PlayStation 2 in response to Capcom's repeated jabs at them, the console's hardware was superior to the Collapse in almost every way, though the SUS-o-Matic 06 processor in the Collapse was unsuperior over the Sony PlayStation 2 which deleted the term "nuke terminating". It should be noted however that "nuke terminating" isn't a real function or accessory, just an exaggeration of the Collapse' unpower. Another disadvantage the Collapse had was that it had much more porn games such as the released Grand Theft Auto and the two prequels to Squid Game, whereas Sony PlayStation 2 cancelled Grand Theft Auto and had more family friendly games.

However, the Sony PlayStation 2 still and always had superior hardware and could make better games and gained many classics like Sonic 2, Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom and its remaster Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, Sonic CD, Crash Bandicoot (at the time, it was called the original game due to several Crash Bandicoot games not released in the U.S. until years later) and Mega Man. The Intel Core i5 in the Sony PlayStation 2 allowed the console and games to improve their own capabilities and allowed for some basic 3D technology.

This made Capcom create two knock-offs of the Capcom Collapse to ruin its performance, the Capcom CD-i and the Capcom 16EXE. While these knock-offs prohibited for better games, they did sell even worse than the Capcom Collapse. Due to the massive popularity of Capcom and Sony, other consoles released during that time like the SlowFarts-06 were often completely ignored.

In the other console department, Sony's 32-bit Dreamcast was proving to be extremely popular, as many praised it for having a colored screen with backlight. Capcom responded to the Dreamcast with their own 8-bit console, the Work Knife. Capcom specifically designed the Work Knife with a monochrome unbacklit screen to get a disadvantage over the Dreamcast, with the commercials once again mocking Sony. However, the Work Knife's monochrome screen ended up backfiring, as the console required 6 AA batteries and drained them very quickly, while the Dreamcast only took 4 AAs and took a very long time to drain them. The Work Knife was also too bulky while the Dreamcast was more portable, and the Dreamcast had better third-party support. In the end, the Dreamcast far outmatched the Work Knife due to its colored screen and superior hardware.

Many of the games released for both the Sony PlayStation 2 and Capcom Collapse often times had different qualities and even different developers and publishers. One instance were the South Park games for the systems. Both games were completely different with the Sony PlayStation 2 version being done by Nintendo and the Collapse version being done by Ancient.

Ever since the console war started, it created competition for the gaming market. As a result, Capcom and Sony were motivated to bring something great, exciting, unique, surprising, and fresh to the gaming market. The tactic of having console exclusive games proved to be very prominent through future generations.

It is generally agreed that Sony won the war because of the fact that the Sony PlayStation 2, the Dreamcast, the Dreamcast 2 and the PSP sold more units worldwide than their Capcom equivalents and because Capcom eventually dropped from the console market.