Sony Computer Entertainment Sony PlayStation (PS1)

About

The original Sony PlayStation is the most important console ever released. Not the best — that’s subjective. Not the most innovative — the NES, Wii, and Switch all have stronger claims. But no single console has had a greater impact on the gaming industry’s trajectory. The PlayStation took a medium dominated by Nintendo and Sega, opened it to hundreds of developers, expanded its audience to adults, and sold 102.49 million units — the first console to cross 100 million. It transformed Sony from a consumer electronics company into gaming’s most powerful brand and established the template that the industry still follows. The PlayStation was born from betrayal. In the late 1980s, Nintendo contracted Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Famicom. Ken Kutaragi, a Sony engineer who had secretly contributed to the SNES’s sound chip design, led the project. The plan was a hybrid device: the “Play Station” would play both SNES cartridges and a new CD-ROM format, with Sony controlling CD software licensing. At CES 1991, Sony publicly announced the Play Station. The next morning, Nintendo announced a rival deal with Philips, effectively killing the partnership. The reason was contractual — Nintendo’s president Hiroshi Yamauchi realized Sony’s agreement gave them excessive control over the lucrative software licensing revenue. The public humiliation infuriated Sony’s leadership. Chairman Norio Ohga authorized Kutaragi to develop a standalone console. The PlayStation launched in Japan on December 3, 1994 at ¥39,800, followed by North America on September 9, 1995 at $299. The price was $100 less than the Sega Saturn, a gap that Sony exploited relentlessly in marketing. The PlayStation’s MIPS R3000A CPU at 33.8688 MHz was a 32-bit RISC processor derived from workstation technology. The custom Sony GPU could render 360,000 flat-shaded polygons per second (180,000 textured) with hardware support for Gouraud shading and texture mapping. 2 MB of main RAM and 1 MB of video RAM s

References

• Video Game Console Library↗