Collection essentials #344: Sony PlayStation

And now, I’ve finally gotten to one of the biggest and most recognizable brands in gaming.

Sony is of course a hugely successful electronics company, and had been long before trying their hand in the video game market. They started out by publishing video games, starting with Super Dodgeball for NES in 1989 and then several more in the early ‘90s.

I’ve talked about before how as technology was improving, it was clear that CDs were eventually going to be the future of video games rather than cartridges, and companies tried to get on that bandwagon early by releasing CD add-on peripherals for their consoles which would have their own compatible CD games. Nintendo had previously released a similar peripheral for the Famicom in Japan called the Famicom Disk System which used floppy disks, and they were interested in doing something similar with the SNES to get in on the CD craze. They had serious talks with Sony about teaming up to make such a thing, a peripheral that would be called the “Nintendo PlayStation”, and a prototype was developed which wasn’t revealed to the public until years later. That project fell through, as well as a similar arrangement with Philips. Both Philips and Sony went on to release standalone CD-based consoles of their own in the aftermath, though only one of those went on to be a household name.

There were a number of failed game consoles in the early ‘90s that tried to take advantage of improving technology, such as the Panasonic 3DO and the Atari Jaguar. And so, it would be easy to have skepticism towards anything new coming out. Nintendo and Sega were the two big competitors at the time, and it would take quite an impressive effort to infiltrate their market share. Sony not only managed to do so, but achieved success beyond their wildest dreams, not only surpassing BOTH Nintendo and Sega but growing the video game market in general.

How did Sony do it? They made a variety of wise choices, which combined with some favorable circumstances that worked in their favor to produce huge success. First of all, their timing was perfect. Their first console was announced in 1993, first released in Japan at the end of 1994, and then in Western regions in September of 1995. At this point the technology available had improved just enough to the point of providing a viable CD-based console that would boast 3D graphics better than anything seen on home consoles at the time of launch. It was slated to release at roughly the same time as Sega’s Saturn, and it would beat Nintendo’s next console to the market by over a year. 

Mistakes by their two chief competitors proved crucial. First of all, Sega shot themselves in the foot by announcing the surprise launch of the Saturn in May of 1995 at the price of $399, announced at E3. This gave Sony the opportunity for an iconic moment later on at E3 during their press conference about their PlayStation. They called up their head of development for a special announcement, and he simply walked up to the microphone and uttered one thing: “$299”. The crowd went bananas, and Sega was cooked. Nintendo also made a major blunder by choosing to use cartridges for their next-generation console rather than CDs. While there were some advantages to cartridges such as the fact they’d have far quicker loading times and would be harder to pirate, the advantages of CDs were far greater. CDs could store more data, had better audio, could render full-motion video, and perhaps most importantly were cheaper to produce. Third-party developers also weren’t a big fan of Nintendo’s policies for those making games on their consoles. Perhaps because they originally had a near-monopoly on the American market, Nintendo had enforced strict rules and high costs for companies that wanted to develop games for their hardware. This opened the door for Sony to come along and be much more developer-friendly, and this caused third party support to flee from Nintendo to Sony in droves.

Sony also marketed the PlayStation effectively, and it was a smashing success the moment it hit store shelves. It is one of only four non-portable game systems to sell over 100 million units worldwide, and the oldest game system of any kind to have that distinction. The only console older than the PlayStation to even sell half that many units was the NES/Famicom. There was an enormous amount of games produced for the original PlayStation, and by the end of its lifespan (to my knowledge) its game library was more than double the size of any console released previously. This was around the time where video games “graduated” from being seen as a children’s toy and properly recognized as a pastime that people of practically any age can enjoy. 

With such a huge library, PlayStation had something to offer anyone with any kind of an interest in video games, from the most casual to the most hardcore. This large and diverse library was key to its success, as Sony themselves weren’t as prolific of a game developer as Nintendo or Sega. In fact, the PlayStation didn’t even truly have a mascot on the level of Nintendo’s Mario or Sega’s Sonic. There were some characters like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon who may have appeared to play that role at times, but none could reach the same heights as the plumber or the hedgehog, and to Sony’s delight it didn’t truly matter.

The first PlayStation controller had no analog sticks, but after a few years when it became clear how much benefit sticks had to 3D gaming and that it would be the new norm for controllers, Sony released the “DualShock” which featured two of them, one of the most recognizable controller designs of all-time. I don’t know what the numbers are, but I believe most PlayStation games released after the DualShock utilized it. 

As far as my own history, I didn’t own a PlayStation during the days when it was the #1 console on the market. But as you can imagine, I frequently got chances to play it, as I knew many people who had one. I was a Nintendo kid, so I preferred to get Nintendo’s consoles first. I certainly wanted my own PlayStation though, and I particularly developed an interest in the popular Final Fantasy titles that it had. In the spring of 2003, when it was no longer a major current console, my family was at a shopping mall while on vacation, and at a game store there I noticed that they were selling PlayStation consoles for only about $35. I was like, “Oh boy, that’s so cheap for a console! Maybe I can actually get one!” And sure enough, I managed to convince my dad to let me get it. I forget if he bought it for me or if I used allowance money! It was the first non-Nintendo console I ever owned, and later that year the floodgates would open as I got a few other ‘90s consoles for cheap as well. The console on the left in the photo above is the very same one I bought in 2003, though last I checked it has a major problem because sometimes it briefly fails to detect controllers plugged in, so it fell out of use a long time ago.

In modern times, the PlayStation library is still quite impressive. Some future PlayStation consoles are backwards compatible, so you don’t necessarily need the original system to play its games. It hasn’t aged perfectly, particularly in the graphical department. For example, early 3D sports games have been well surpassed on future consoles and no longer have the novelty of simply being in 3D that they had when they came out. But there are plenty of original PlayStation games that have timeless appeal and are very much worth your time. Stay tuned as I cover some of my favorites in the coming weeks.