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The Making Of: PlayStation
PlayStation launched in Europe on September 29 at £299, across many more countries than Sony had intended. “They were quite upset with me – they really only wanted us to launch in the UK, France and Germany, because of possible advertising expense,” says Deering. “I said that it’d go elsewhere anyway, and there would be other issues, and leave it to me. So we went everywhere except Scandinavia, which we didn’t get to until November or so.”
By the end of the year, his team had shipped 600,000 units, using Deering’s experience with and contacts in Sony’s film and music publishing businesses. SCEE eventually covered Russia, India and the Middle East. By the end of March 2007, Sony had sold 102 million PlayStations. Sales between SCEA and SCEE were almost equal, demonstrating the importance of Europe to the global game market. And it was a game market transformed by a new way of doing business and given new legitimacy by the presence of such an internationally respected company as Sony. PlayStation was the product of a confluence of the right technology at the right time at the right price, but it took Sony to create it. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any other company than Sony, armed with the combined experience and capabilities of its hardware, software and entertainment divisions, producing a story like PlayStation. All those different divisions were galvanised by a single vision, however. Kutagari’s constant insistence that PlayStation was a gaming machine, not some multimedia device, focused a sprawling organisation into unity.
Today, PlayStation 3 is the result of anything but focus, and Nintendo has regained the position as the leading console maker that Sony took from it. And with what? A console driven by the most coherent vision of its generation. Perhaps St Augustine was right and there is only one story: of creation, fall and redemption. In PlayStation’s case, we’re now waiting on the latter.
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England and Wales company registration number 2008885
Loving the orginal prototype!
with a CD-ROM wooooop!
What a great article. This is why I read Edge, good work.
People might as well just read "Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony Playstation and The Visionaries Who Conquered The World of Video Games” by Reiji Asakura.
Much of what is presented here in short form is explained far more fully and in far more interesting manner in the book above. If you even hope to understand the first PlayStation system you need to read Reiji Asakura's book. Better still the books is actually very interesting full of backstabbing and twists. Of extreme interest is how people at Sony actively tried to sink the whole project and even employees intimately involved with Sony’s early efforts in making games actively tried to kill the project in favor of Philips CDi.
I don't get this part,
So we went everywhere except Scandinavia, which we didn’t get to until November or so.
I got my PlayStation on September 29'th here in Sweden, they were in every game shop from that date.
/Viktor
What a great article that has brought back memories. Too this day I still have my pre-order disc “Hear it now, Play it later” from pre-ordering the Playstation that summer.
This was an extremely engaging read. By getting to know PlayStation's history better, I now have a lot more respect for the brand.
I would love to read another article that elaborates on the details of the original Sony-Nintendo collaborations, though. That image of the Super Famicom/CD hybrid console up there is quite tantalizing, especially since I've somehow never seen it before this article.
However, the history of the SNES and its various CD add-ons, etc. seems to be pretty convoluted and confusing, indeed, based on this forum thread:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=126091
After looking through that thread, I can understand why the actual details of the Sony-Nintendo (and Philips) deal(s) were only glossed over in this Edge article. It's really hard trying to clearly understand everything that happened with this SNES CD stuff.
But that's OK. This article was about PlayStation after Nintendo, and for that, it was the best article I've ever read on the subject.
Thank you, Edge.
P.S. some elaboration on the PlayStation logo candidates and controller prototypes would be nice, too.
Yeah that picture surprised me too, the only picture I have seen is this
http://www.ugo.com/games/video-game-urban-legends/images/entries/snes-cd...
This was one damn good article, the best way to start the weekend.
I never tire of hearing this story. Bless Ken Kutaragi for his vision and thank you, Sony, for Playstation! I'm gonna go play my PS3 right now.
Great article - I hope to see more like it on a regular basis, maybe including the history of a few key developers.
Put a fucking name on these things so your site can have an identity and peaple can get the credit they deserve.
Some people will complain about anything.
did you ever think maybe more then 1 person contributed to writing it? Maybe even the whole staff contributed? And so, the writer that is credited it............the Edge Staff?
Great feature! I love these Friday history lessons.
Speaking of which, when will we online readers see the Ocarina of Time retrospective promised a month or three ago?
"Perhaps St Augustine was right and there is only one story: of creation, fall and redemption."
Does this mean Wii = Redemption phase for Nintendo? They've already had the creation and fall.
I also heard that the original Sony Playstation allowed you to programme a little on it, thus Sony could advertise it as an educational product as well, and educational products get less VAT in the UK!
I think you are confusing the first PlayStation wth the second one. All PlayStation 2 units shipped with a version of Basic to move it to another tax category but I think in later court cases Sony had to pay full (import?) tax for the unit.
/Viktor
Did you see my post dude? Click on the wiki link ... looks more like a ps1 than a ps2 to me ...
Yes, I read your post and you are correct, that is a PS1 and I have nothing else to add to your post so I did not reply to it. What I did have something to say about was the first post where the poster asked about Sony doing something to get a lower import tax for the PlayStation. The Net Yaroze was not made to get a lower import tax as it's a different machine then the normal PlayStation, the Basic programming software included with every PlayStation 2 was.
/Viktor
It was sold as a separate system called Net Yaroze, here's the wiki article if you're interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze
good stuff, it's interesting that there is a pull that games are too expensive and cumbersome to make today- and yet prior to the ps1, it sounds like games were even more expensive and much riskier to make.
Good read, this is from the time when sony still had respect for developers, publishers and their customers.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
Very interesting article.
I think you forgot to point out that a lot of new franchises published on the Playstation helped to push the brand. The platform wouldn't have had such a success without the help of Resident Evil and others. And not to forget: Final Fantasy VII. I can remember like it was yesterday how shocked I was to hear that it was coming out on the PS, I was a loyal Nintendo fan at that time.
And how amazed and inspired I was when I first saw it in action. It was like...wow. Mature Storytelling, incredible visuals and sounds. It was simply dreams becoming true. It was for me (and for millions others) a reason to change the system.
I think that the "redemption" part has already begun. The arrogant tone of the last couple of years has been dropped and there have been some interesting changes in the personal structure. The panicky reaction after the launch of the PS3 (Sixaxis without rumble, then with rumble; saying first that there will be only one SKU and then changing in mid-course; cutting the price in Japan shortly before the launch;...) has calmed and there seems to be more of a coherent business "line" (concentration on a couple of franchises and help of third parties with better dev kits). But maybe it's only the fanboy in me who is wishing...
Still sad that Crazy Ken isn't on the boat anymore. He really was a big visionary.
Oh yeah: Cut the price and wonders will happen!
I have to say very good article, Its interesting to read how one of the biggesst names in gaming got started in the industry heres to many more years of excellent games and consoles for ALL gamers.