The PlayStation 1 was the victor of its generational console war against the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn for various reasons – not least of which was a bunch of unforced errors on the part of Sega and, to a lesser, extent, Nintendo – but it’s fair to say that the game selection involved was a major factor. Whereas Nintendo and Sega tried to operate comparatively closed shops, with third-party developers expected to toe the line when it came to developing for them (especially when it came to more mature content), Sony went out of their way to make it easy for developers to produce games for the PlayStation.
This inevitably meant that the platform ended up with its fair share of shovelware, along with games which sparked controversy like Grand Theft Auto for its depiction of violence in a close-to-real-world setting or Tomb Raider for its shameless male gaze-y handling of Lara Croft, whose polygonal boobs were frequently treated as the game’s main selling points. Part of the reason Nintendo and Sega had been careful about third party software for their systems came down to fear of just such quality control issues or media backlashes, after all.
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