A Brief History Of The PLAYSTATION - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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A Brief History Of The PLAYSTATION

Released on December 3rd 1994, the original Sony PlayStation was the first console of any type to ship over 100 million units, something it did in under a decade. But how did it come to be...


PlayStation was the brainchild of Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who had just finished managing one of the company's hardware engineering divisions at that time and would later be dubbed as "The Father of the PlayStation".

The console's origins date back to 1988 where it was originally a joint project between Nintendo and Sony to create a CD-ROM for the Super Famicom. Although Nintendo denied the existence of the Sony deal as late as March 1991, Sony revealed a Super Famicom with a built-in CD-ROM drive, that incorporated Green Book technology or CD-i, called "Play Station" (also known as SNES-CD) at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991...


However, a day after the announcement at CES, Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony, opting to go with Philips instead but using the same technology. (It was later revealed that the deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies.) This breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga, who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of developing the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo.

At that time, negotiations were still on-going between Nintendo and Sony, with Nintendo offering Sony a "non-gaming role" regarding their new partnership with Philips. This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his work with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony. Negotiations officially ended in May 1992.
 
In order to decide the fate of the PlayStation project, a meeting was held in June 1992, consisting of Sony President Ohga, PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony's board. At the meeting, Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board.


Eventually, Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo. Nevertheless, due to strong opposition from a majority present at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives, Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony's headquarters to Sony Music, a completely separate financial entity owned by Sony, so as to retain the project and maintain relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project (which, incidentally, helped lead to the creation of the DVD).

There was uncertainty over whether the console should primarily focus on 2D sprite graphics or 3D polygon graphics. It was only after witnessing the success of Sega's Virtua Fighter in Japanese arcades that the direction of the PlayStation became instantly clear and 3D polygon graphics became the console's primary focus.


At Sony Music Entertainment, Kutaragi worked closely with Shigeo Maruyama, the CEO of Sony Music, and with Akira Sato to form Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI). A building block of SCEI was its initial partnership with Sony Music which helped SCEI attract creative talent to the company as well as assist SCEI in manufacturing, marketing and producing discs, something that Sony Music had been doing with Music Discs. The final two key members of SCEI were Terry Tokunaka, the President of SCEI from Sony's headquarters, and Olaf Olafsson. Olafsson was CEO and president of New York-based Sony Interactive Entertainment which was the parent company for the 1994-founded Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA).

The PlayStation project, SCEI's first official project, was finally given the green light by Sony executives in 1993.



The PlayStation logo was designed by Manabu Sakamoto. He wanted the logo to capture the 3D support of the console, but instead of just adding apparent depth to the letters "P" and "S", he created an optical illusion that suggested the letters in depth of space. Sakamoto also stuck with four bright principle colors, red, yellow, green, and blue, only having to tune the green color for better harmony across the logo. Sakamoto also designed the black and white logo based on the same design, reserved for times where colors could not be used.

After a demonstration of Sony's distribution plan as well as tech demos of its new console to game publishers and developers in a hotel in Tokyo in 1994, numerous developers began to approach PlayStation. Two of whom later became major partners were Electronic Arts in the West and Namco in Japan. One of the factors which attracted developers to the platform was the use of a 3D-capable, CD-ROM-based console which was much cheaper and easier to manufacture for in comparison to Nintendo's rival console, which used cartridge systems.


PlayStation eventually hit Japanese stores in December 1994 and gained massive sales due to its lower price point than its competitor, the Sega Saturn. Popularity of the console spread after its release worldwide in North America and Europe, eventually becoming the first video game console to sell 120 million units.

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