Post by Mercy Drive on Sept 11, 2005 6:57:07 GMT -5
Credit: www.gamespot.com
the PlayStation was Sony's introduction to the game industry. While at the time the company's success at making games was not guaranteed, its foray into the video game world has proven in the years since the PlayStation's launch to be, at the very least, financially lucrative. Rivalries between Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft have been both notorious and competitive, and even now the big three continue to duke it out as we head into the next generation of systems.
The PlayStation, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on September 9, 2005, launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, and in the US nearly a year later. Sony was (in)famous for edgy marketing campaigns and (over)saturating the market with a ton of third-party games. Criticism of Sony revealed problems with the PlayStation's hardware and the mediocrity of many of the system's games. However, the PlayStation was competitive and innovative, and it dominated game sales. The second iteration of the PlayStation was called the PSOne, a sleeker but otherwise identical system that was released in 2000.
Competition with the PlayStation came in two forms, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64. Although both systems were competitive in some respects, the Saturn suffered at the hands of an early launch. Released early to vie for a larger chunk of the gaming market, the Saturn didn't have enough games to keep gamer interest. Nintendo, in a sad, ironic twist, had support problems because it stuck with the cartridge format for games. Had Nintendo and Sony maintained their early collaboration on the CD-ROM based add-on to the SNES, things might have turned out a lot differently for the game industry.
Through ups and downs, the PlayStation's theme was games, games, and games. The system is responsible for a lot of franchises that have made their way over to the PS2 (and soon to the PS3). It's also responsible for a lot of games that should never have been made in the first place. Such is the price you pay for having so many games to your name.
One of the PlayStation's other claims to fame was popularizing importing and modding, for better or for worse. The PlayStation support in Japan was arguably better than that in the US, and gamers learned quickly that with many types of games, getting the Japanese version meant getting the exact same gameplay much earlier. Although CD-based games worked for Sony in the long run, they were also easier to copy, and modding ran rampant, especially later in the system's life span.
Nobody could have guessed that Sony would be as successful at video games as it was. But it's clear that Sony would not be working on its third console generation if it hadn't been for the PlayStation.
The First Employee
Former PlayStation guru Todd Colletti tells us stories about the system.
We sat down with Todd Colletti, now GameSpot's Director of Engineering, who can best be described as the first employee at Sony Computer Entertainment of America. Since Todd witnessed the entire PlayStation era firsthand, we thought he would be the prime candidate to give us the straight dish on the conceptualizing, building, and life span of the PlayStation.
In the spring of 1994, Todd began work at Sony on a project called, at the time, the "PSX." As the manager of research and development, Todd was in charge of third-party relations, creating and licensing peripherals, and first-party content development for both software and hardware. Despite the fact that he had not been in the game industry before his gig at Sony, gaming was very much his hobby, as he dabbled in game coding for the Amiga. Although he aided in planning for the PS2 before he left for GT Interactive in 1998, the PlayStation was very much Todd's expertise at Sony.
Watch the interview with Todd as he spills the beans on Ken Kutaragi's exact reaction to the breakup with Nintendo, as well as what went into determining the price of the console.
Cracking open the System
GameSpot Hardware shows us the PlayStation inside-out.
The PlayStation console that was launched in September of 1995 was very different from the original CD-ROM-based system Sony first started to develop in 1988. Nintendo had revived the video game industry with its hugely successful Nintendo Entertainment System, and several manufacturers jumped in to get a piece of the growing market. Both NEC and Sega launched new 16-bit systems in Japan. The PC Engine, an 8-bit system with 16-bit graphics (later released in North America as the TurboGrafx-16), arrived in 1987 from NEC, while the Sega Mega Drive (named the Sega Genesis in North America) hit Japan a year later in 1988. Sony also wanted to get into video games, but it wasn't ready to develop and market its own console just yet.
Fortunately for Sony, in a situation destined to repeat itself several times over, Nintendo had fallen behind the console technology curve and needed to release a new system to catch up with its competitors. Nintendo had started development on the successor to the NES, the Super NES (known as the Super Famicom in Japan). The new system would feature a 16-bit CPU core and numerous auxiliary chips, including a custom-made Sony sound processor. The SNES would play cartridge-based media, but it would feature an expansion port for hardware additions.
The NEC TurboGrafx-16 primarily used game cards, but it was also the first console to offer an optional CD-ROM expansion peripheral. In comparison to game cartridge capacity that topped out at roughly 4-5MB due to cost and the technology limitations of the day, a CD-ROM could store an unheard of 680MB worth of game data and was much cheaper to mass-produce. Nintendo tapped Sony to develop a similar CD-ROM expansion unit for its Super NES console. Sony, Philips, and Microsoft had developed a CD-ROM XA (extended architecture) format that made it easier to access and return data, audio, and video at the same time. The Sony-developed drive would be Nintendo's answer to the PC Engine's CD-ROM drive and the CD-ROM peripheral Sega was developing for the Mega Drive.
Sony planned to use the Nintendo deal to get a foothold in the console market by developing its own console system that could play SNES games as well as CD-ROMs. Better yet, Sony had the lucrative software licensing rights to the new Super Disc CD-ROM format. Recognizing the Sony threat, Nintendo turned around and announced that it was working with Philips to develop the SNES CD-ROM drive in 1991. Nintendo couldn't stand to let a competing SNES-compatible CD-ROM system harm its potential software licensing revenues. Sony, Philips, and Nintendo eventually worked out a deal that let Sony continue with its development of a SNES-compatible CD-ROM system but gave Nintendo all game licensing rights.
Development delays and poor market reception for competing NEC and Sega CD-ROM peripherals eventually doomed the original PlayStation device, but Sony gained valuable console development knowledge from the experience on both the business and hardware sides. The CD-ROM peripherals from the 16-bit generation could enable support for higher-quality games, but the hardware was so prohibitively expensive that it didn't make sense for developers to create CD-ROM games for such a small install base. Why make a CD-ROM game for a peripheral device when you already know there's a much larger market for your game on the console level?
The 16-bit era had already peaked by 1993, so Sony set its sights on preparing a stand-alone console for the next generation, code-named the PlayStation X. Sony dropped the "X" designation from the official console name, but the popular letter would resurface later in the multifunctional PVR/DVD-recorder PSX line based on the PlayStation 2 console. Sony built its new 32-bit PlayStation around the CD-ROM drive instead of a cartridge slot, but it made sure to keep the system affordable as a dedicated gaming machine. Sony also signed on as much developer support as it could for its console, since having great games proved to be much more important than having the most advanced hardware. And that's how the original Sony PlayStation evolved from an ill-conceived Nintendo CD-ROM peripheral into the PlayStation console that helped Sony dominate the console market as we know it.
Sony has shipped more than 100 million PlayStation and PSOne units since first launching the system in Japan in December of 1994. The PlayStation 2, released in 2000, is closing in on the 100 million mark, and Sony plans to introduce the PlayStation 3 in the middle of next year.
the PlayStation was Sony's introduction to the game industry. While at the time the company's success at making games was not guaranteed, its foray into the video game world has proven in the years since the PlayStation's launch to be, at the very least, financially lucrative. Rivalries between Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft have been both notorious and competitive, and even now the big three continue to duke it out as we head into the next generation of systems.
The PlayStation, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on September 9, 2005, launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, and in the US nearly a year later. Sony was (in)famous for edgy marketing campaigns and (over)saturating the market with a ton of third-party games. Criticism of Sony revealed problems with the PlayStation's hardware and the mediocrity of many of the system's games. However, the PlayStation was competitive and innovative, and it dominated game sales. The second iteration of the PlayStation was called the PSOne, a sleeker but otherwise identical system that was released in 2000.
Competition with the PlayStation came in two forms, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64. Although both systems were competitive in some respects, the Saturn suffered at the hands of an early launch. Released early to vie for a larger chunk of the gaming market, the Saturn didn't have enough games to keep gamer interest. Nintendo, in a sad, ironic twist, had support problems because it stuck with the cartridge format for games. Had Nintendo and Sony maintained their early collaboration on the CD-ROM based add-on to the SNES, things might have turned out a lot differently for the game industry.
Through ups and downs, the PlayStation's theme was games, games, and games. The system is responsible for a lot of franchises that have made their way over to the PS2 (and soon to the PS3). It's also responsible for a lot of games that should never have been made in the first place. Such is the price you pay for having so many games to your name.
One of the PlayStation's other claims to fame was popularizing importing and modding, for better or for worse. The PlayStation support in Japan was arguably better than that in the US, and gamers learned quickly that with many types of games, getting the Japanese version meant getting the exact same gameplay much earlier. Although CD-based games worked for Sony in the long run, they were also easier to copy, and modding ran rampant, especially later in the system's life span.
Nobody could have guessed that Sony would be as successful at video games as it was. But it's clear that Sony would not be working on its third console generation if it hadn't been for the PlayStation.
The First Employee
Former PlayStation guru Todd Colletti tells us stories about the system.
We sat down with Todd Colletti, now GameSpot's Director of Engineering, who can best be described as the first employee at Sony Computer Entertainment of America. Since Todd witnessed the entire PlayStation era firsthand, we thought he would be the prime candidate to give us the straight dish on the conceptualizing, building, and life span of the PlayStation.
In the spring of 1994, Todd began work at Sony on a project called, at the time, the "PSX." As the manager of research and development, Todd was in charge of third-party relations, creating and licensing peripherals, and first-party content development for both software and hardware. Despite the fact that he had not been in the game industry before his gig at Sony, gaming was very much his hobby, as he dabbled in game coding for the Amiga. Although he aided in planning for the PS2 before he left for GT Interactive in 1998, the PlayStation was very much Todd's expertise at Sony.
Watch the interview with Todd as he spills the beans on Ken Kutaragi's exact reaction to the breakup with Nintendo, as well as what went into determining the price of the console.
Cracking open the System
GameSpot Hardware shows us the PlayStation inside-out.
The PlayStation console that was launched in September of 1995 was very different from the original CD-ROM-based system Sony first started to develop in 1988. Nintendo had revived the video game industry with its hugely successful Nintendo Entertainment System, and several manufacturers jumped in to get a piece of the growing market. Both NEC and Sega launched new 16-bit systems in Japan. The PC Engine, an 8-bit system with 16-bit graphics (later released in North America as the TurboGrafx-16), arrived in 1987 from NEC, while the Sega Mega Drive (named the Sega Genesis in North America) hit Japan a year later in 1988. Sony also wanted to get into video games, but it wasn't ready to develop and market its own console just yet.
Fortunately for Sony, in a situation destined to repeat itself several times over, Nintendo had fallen behind the console technology curve and needed to release a new system to catch up with its competitors. Nintendo had started development on the successor to the NES, the Super NES (known as the Super Famicom in Japan). The new system would feature a 16-bit CPU core and numerous auxiliary chips, including a custom-made Sony sound processor. The SNES would play cartridge-based media, but it would feature an expansion port for hardware additions.
The NEC TurboGrafx-16 primarily used game cards, but it was also the first console to offer an optional CD-ROM expansion peripheral. In comparison to game cartridge capacity that topped out at roughly 4-5MB due to cost and the technology limitations of the day, a CD-ROM could store an unheard of 680MB worth of game data and was much cheaper to mass-produce. Nintendo tapped Sony to develop a similar CD-ROM expansion unit for its Super NES console. Sony, Philips, and Microsoft had developed a CD-ROM XA (extended architecture) format that made it easier to access and return data, audio, and video at the same time. The Sony-developed drive would be Nintendo's answer to the PC Engine's CD-ROM drive and the CD-ROM peripheral Sega was developing for the Mega Drive.
Sony planned to use the Nintendo deal to get a foothold in the console market by developing its own console system that could play SNES games as well as CD-ROMs. Better yet, Sony had the lucrative software licensing rights to the new Super Disc CD-ROM format. Recognizing the Sony threat, Nintendo turned around and announced that it was working with Philips to develop the SNES CD-ROM drive in 1991. Nintendo couldn't stand to let a competing SNES-compatible CD-ROM system harm its potential software licensing revenues. Sony, Philips, and Nintendo eventually worked out a deal that let Sony continue with its development of a SNES-compatible CD-ROM system but gave Nintendo all game licensing rights.
Development delays and poor market reception for competing NEC and Sega CD-ROM peripherals eventually doomed the original PlayStation device, but Sony gained valuable console development knowledge from the experience on both the business and hardware sides. The CD-ROM peripherals from the 16-bit generation could enable support for higher-quality games, but the hardware was so prohibitively expensive that it didn't make sense for developers to create CD-ROM games for such a small install base. Why make a CD-ROM game for a peripheral device when you already know there's a much larger market for your game on the console level?
The 16-bit era had already peaked by 1993, so Sony set its sights on preparing a stand-alone console for the next generation, code-named the PlayStation X. Sony dropped the "X" designation from the official console name, but the popular letter would resurface later in the multifunctional PVR/DVD-recorder PSX line based on the PlayStation 2 console. Sony built its new 32-bit PlayStation around the CD-ROM drive instead of a cartridge slot, but it made sure to keep the system affordable as a dedicated gaming machine. Sony also signed on as much developer support as it could for its console, since having great games proved to be much more important than having the most advanced hardware. And that's how the original Sony PlayStation evolved from an ill-conceived Nintendo CD-ROM peripheral into the PlayStation console that helped Sony dominate the console market as we know it.
Sony has shipped more than 100 million PlayStation and PSOne units since first launching the system in Japan in December of 1994. The PlayStation 2, released in 2000, is closing in on the 100 million mark, and Sony plans to introduce the PlayStation 3 in the middle of next year.
