Sony has faced countless key crossroads as it grew into the video game giant it is today: its early partnership talks with Nintendo, the original "boomerang" controller design for the PlayStation 3, and now new revelations that the company almost won the FIFA license and iconic British studio Bullfrog at the same time in the mid-90s.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the birth of PlayStation, former Sony senior producer Martin Ortemus revealed this past event in an interview.As he recalled, Bullfrog's co-founder, producer and designer Peter Molyneux was looking for partners for a number of new projects at the studio.

"I remember there was a producer who was a friend of Peter's, and I was sitting across from him, listening to him take Peter's call," Ortemus said. "Peter was talking about Dungeon Keeper, a game called Immortal that never came out, and another project. After the call, we thought it would be easier and cheaper to acquire them (Bullfrog), but Bullfrog ended up being acquired by EA."

At that time, Molineux was already a "hit maker" in the industry.The two works "God Is Crazy" and "Theme Park" fully demonstrate his talent and keen insight into the market. Major publishers are eager to cooperate with him and provide financial support for his projects.

Ortemus recalled that when Sony tried to make a bid for Bullfrog, competitors - especially Electronic Arts - moved quickly: "EA didn't want to miss out. You know, they had just released Theme Park, which I think was Peter's fourth or fifth hit game in a row."

After missing out on Bullfrog, Sony immediately launched an attack on FIFA licensing.Juan Montes, former vice president of software development at PlayStation, revealed: "We were developing a football game at the time. The technology was mature and the level was quite good. At that time, we were only one step away from obtaining the FIFA authorization - really, very close."

"But in the end, in order to maintain a good relationship with third parties (developers/publishers), we decided not to continue fighting. But we really almost entered the field of football games at that time."

Although from a technical perspective, Sony missed these two important resources, the FIFA series has been extremely successful on the PlayStation console for a long time, and many Bullfrog games have also been launched on the platform.But just imagine, if FIFA became a PlayStation exclusive, Bullfrog flourished under Sony, and even "Fable" became a PlayStation 2 platform game, what would the gaming industry look like today? Maybe in another timeline, I was happily playing "Dungeon Keeper 4" on PlayStation 5.