Nintendo had been the clear leader in the industry since the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 and the Nintendo 64 was initially expected to maintain this position.
The inception of what became the released PlayStation dates back to 1988 with a joint venture between Nintendo and Sony.
Already wary of Sony's increasing leverage at this point, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi deemed the original 1988 contract unacceptable as he realised the earlier agreement essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format.
As a fifth generation console, the PlayStation primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. Development of the console began after a failed venture with Nintendo to create a CD-ROM peripheral for their Super Famicom in the early 1990s.
Recognising the influence early 1990s underground clubbing and rave culture had on young people, especially in the United Kingdom, Glaendenning felt that the culture had become mainstream enough to help cultivate PlayStation's emerging identity.
By the late 1990s, Sony became a highly regarded console brand due to the PlayStation, with a significant lead over second-place Nintendo, while Sega was relegated to a distant third. The PlayStation became the first "computer entertainment platform" to ship over 100 million units worldwide, with many critics attributing the console's success to third-party developers.
Keith Stuart from The Guardian likewise named it as the seventh best console in 2020, declaring that its success was so profound it "ruled the 1990s". ===CD format=== The success of the PlayStation is widely believed to have influenced the demise of the cartridge-based home console.
Furthermore, Sony would also be the sole benefactor of licensing related to music and film software that it had been aggressively pursuing as a secondary application. The product, under the name "Play Station", was to be announced at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Knowing that they had to take decisive action, Sony severed all ties with Nintendo on 4 May 1992. To determine the fate of the PlayStation project, Ohga chaired a meeting the following month, consisting of Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony's board.
On 27 October 1993, Sony publicly announced that it was entering the game console market with the PlayStation.
A team from Epic Sony visited more than a hundred companies throughout Japan in May 1993 in hopes of attracting game creators with the PlayStation’s technological appeal.
This changed in 1993 when Sony bought the Liverpudlian company Psygnosis (later renamed SCE Liverpool) for million, therefore securing their first in-house development team.
It was first released on 3 December 1994 in Japan, 9 September 1995 in North America, 29 September 1995 in Europe, and 15 November 1995 in Australia, and was the first of the PlayStation line of video game consoles.
When Psygnosis arranged an audience for SN Systems with Sony's Japanese executives at the January 1994 CES in Las Vegas, Beveridge and Day presented their prototype of the condensed development kit, which could run on an ordinary personal computer with two extension boards.
By the end of 1994, 300,000 PlayStation units were sold in Japan compared to 500,000 Saturn units.
This started early on with the original Japanese launch units; the SCPH-1000, released on 3 December 1994, was the only model that had an S-Video port, which was removed on the next release.
The first controller, named the PlayStation controller, was released alongside the PlayStation in December 1994.
It was first released on 3 December 1994 in Japan, 9 September 1995 in North America, 29 September 1995 in Europe, and 15 November 1995 in Australia, and was the first of the PlayStation line of video game consoles.
Sony formed its North American division and European division, known as Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), in May and June 1995.
After a while, a grey market emerged for PlayStations, which were shipped from Japan to North America and Europe, with some buyers of such consoles paying large amounts of money in the range of £700. Before the release in North America, Sega and Sony presented their consoles at the first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles on 11 May 1995.
The PlayStation went on sale in North America on 9 September 1995 at the undercutting price of $299.
There were over 100,000 pre-orders placed and 17 games available on the market by the time of its American launch, in comparison to the Saturn's six launch titles. The PlayStation released in Europe on 29 September 1995 and in Australia on 15 November 1995.
From September to the end of 1995 – sales of the console in the United States amounted to 800,000 units, giving the PlayStation a commanding lead over the other fifth generation consoles, though the SNES and Mega Drive from the fourth generation outsold it that year.
In May 1995, Famicom Tsūshin scored the console a 19 out of 40, lower than the Saturn's 24 out of 40.
Towards the end of 1996, sales in Europe totalled 2.2 million, of which 700,000 was represented in the UK market.
Glendenning recalled that he had discreetly used at least £100,000 a year in slush fund money to invest in impromptu marketing. In 1996, Sony expanded their CD production facilities in the United States due to the high demand for PlayStation games, increasing their monthly output from 4 million discs to 6.5 million discs.
The PlayStation also outsold the Saturn at a similar ratio in Europe during 1996, with an accumulated 2.2 million consoles sold in the region by the end of the year.
It was launched in June 1996 in Japan, and following public intrigue, was released the following year in other countries.
The European and North American models of the original PlayStation controller is roughly 10% larger than its Japanese variant, to account for the fact the average person in those regions have larger hands than the average Japanese person. Sony's first analogue gamepad, the PlayStation Analog Joystick (often erroneously referred to as the "Sony Flightstick"), was first released in Japan in April 1996.
The first official analogue controller, the Dual Analog Controller, was revealed to the public in a small glass booth at the 1996 PlayStation Expo in Japan, and eventually released in April 1997, coincident with the Japanese releases of analogue-capable titles Tobal 2 and Bushido Blade.
Eidos Interactive's action-adventure game Tomb Raider contributed substantially to the success of the console in 1996, with its main protagonist Lara Croft becoming an early gaming icon and garnering unprecedented media promotion.
The lower production costs of CD-ROMs also allowed publishers an additional source of profit: budget-priced reissues of titles which had already recouped their development costs. Sony Computer Entertainment president Teruhisa Tokunaka remarked in 1996: The increasing complexity of developing games pushed cartridges to their storage limits and this gradually discouraged some third-party developers.
By 1997, there were 52 nightclubs in the United Kingdom with dedicated PlayStation rooms.
The first official analogue controller, the Dual Analog Controller, was revealed to the public in a small glass booth at the 1996 PlayStation Expo in Japan, and eventually released in April 1997, coincident with the Japanese releases of analogue-capable titles Tobal 2 and Bushido Blade.
However, a Nintendo spokesman firmly denied that legal action was being taken and rather it was suggested that vibration feedback was dropped due to Sony wanting to keep the price of the controller down. In November 1997, Sony introduced the DualShock controller.
Albert Kim from Entertainment Weekly praised the PlayStation as a technological marvel, rivalling that of Sega and Nintendo. In a 1997 year-end review, a team of five Electronic Gaming Monthly editors gave the PlayStation scores of 9.5, 8.5, 9.0, 9.0, and 9.5 - for all five editors, the highest score they gave to any of the five consoles reviewed in the issue.
Its success resulted in a significant financial boon for Sony as profits from its video game division contributed to 23 per cent. The next-generation PlayStation 2, which is backward compatible with the PlayStation's DualShock controller and games, was announced in 1999 and launched in 2000.
In July 2000, Sony released a smaller model, the PS one.
The console was only available to buy through an ordering service and with the necessary documentation and software to program PlayStation games and applications through C programming compilers. ====PS One==== On 7 July 2000, Sony released the PS One (stylised as PS one), a smaller, redesigned version of the original PlayStation.
Its success resulted in a significant financial boon for Sony as profits from its video game division contributed to 23 per cent. The next-generation PlayStation 2, which is backward compatible with the PlayStation's DualShock controller and games, was announced in 1999 and launched in 2000.
Licensed tie-in video games of popular films were also prevalent on the PlayStation; Argonaut Games' 2001 adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone went on to sell over eight million copies late in the console's lifespan. Initially, in the United States, PlayStation games were packaged in long cardboard boxes, similar to non-Japanese 3DO and Saturn games.
In 2002, Sony released a LCD screen add-on for the PS One, referred to as the "Combo pack".
Production of the LCD "Combo Pack" ceased in 2004, when the popularity of the PlayStation began to wane in markets outside Japan.
SN Systems would go on to produce development kits for future PlayStation systems, including the PlayStation 2: it was bought out by Sony in 2005. Sony strived to make game production as streamlined and inclusive as possible – an ethos which contrasted with the relatively isolated approach of rivals Sega and Nintendo.
Games for the original PlayStation continued to sell until Sony ceased production of both the PlayStation and its games on 23 March 2006 – over eleven years after it had been released, and nearly eight months before the debut of the PlayStation 3.
A total of 28.15 million PS one units had been sold by the time it was discontinued in March 2006. ===Controllers=== The PlayStation's controller was released in three different iterations over the console's lifespan.
After the console's discontinuation in 2006, the cumulative software shipment was at 962 million units. The PlayStation included a diverse game library which grew to appeal to all types of players.
In 2009, IGN ranked the PlayStation the seventh best console in their list, noting its appeal towards older audiences to be a crucial factor in propelling the video game industry.
Kalinske, in a 2013 interview recalled them saying "that's a stupid idea, Sony doesn't know how to make hardware.
In 2018, RetroGamer named it the third best console, citing its sophisticated 3D capabilities as one of its key factors in gaining mass success, and lauding it as a "game-changer in every sense possible".
It was announced in September 2018 at the Tokyo Game Show, and released on December 3, 2018, the 24th anniversary of the release of the original. As a dedicated console, games are pre-installed to internal memory with 20 games included such as Tekken 3, Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, and Syphon Filter; games run off the open source emulator PCSX.
Keith Stuart from The Guardian likewise named it as the seventh best console in 2020, declaring that its success was so profound it "ruled the 1990s". ===CD format=== The success of the PlayStation is widely believed to have influenced the demise of the cartridge-based home console.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05