The OG PlayStation or PSOne is one of the greatest consoles of all time, period. I grew up playing the hell out of this blocky thing in the image above and recently purchased the cute little rounded one below it just out of pure nostalgic necessity.

If you’re like me and you’re in your mid 20s then you’ve likely been around for the releases of the newer generations of consoles. I’m talking the Xbox 360s and the PS3s. The Nintendo Wii’s and Switches.

What we missed was the controversy that led to the original PlayStation, the drama that we don’t get anymore with the standard boilerplate announcements that we come to expect.

So let’s take a deep dive and talk about the inception of the original PlayStation, the development stages and the launch of the console that solidified Sony’s place in the video game industry.

“The Greatest Betrayal In The Video Game Industry”

The idea of the PlayStation was to be a joint venture stemming from the brain of a man called Ken Kutaragi between video game powerhouse Nintendo and the new to the industry Sony.

Sony was looking to join the video game market and were contracted by Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES console.

Now, we all know that didn’t come to fruition.

What happened was that Nintendo changed their agreement at the very last opportunity, and I mean it. The then president of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi deemed this agreement unacceptable due to the leverage that Sony would hold when it came to the CD-ROM format and knew of Sony’s superior development department. Nintendo then formed a partnership with Philips (Sony’s rival).

So when Sony announced their partnership with Nintendo on the 1st day of a show called the CES held in Las Vegas, the very next day Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln walks on stage and reveals Nintendo are actually allied with Philips instead and are fobbing Sony off. The drama!

The breaking of this unwritten law led to Sony deciding to develop their own console, without Nintendo. Sony considered partnering up with Sega but again, the idea fell through.

Kutagari was on pretty thin ice at this point until a meeting with Sony board members in which he revealed a system he had secretly been working on that played games with 3D graphics, imagine that in 1992?

The announcement

In 1993, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) officially announced that they were entering the market with the PlayStation making 3D graphics the console’s primary focus after witnessing the success of Virtua Fighter in Japanese arcades.

They also distanced themselves from the add-on with Nintendo which was named Play Station and rebranded as the PlayStation X which you’ll likely know as the PSX. They genuinely didn’t want to be connected to Nintendo in fear of their console looking like a “toy”.

The original games of the PSOne

Unlike Nintendo & Sega, Sony had absolutely zero experience making games.

They turned to third party developers and received support from the likes of Namco and Konami, developers that were known for arcade games which secured Ridge Racer and Mortal Kombat 3.

Speaking of Mortal Kombat, Namco & PlayStation began work on a direct competitor to the Virtua Fighter arcade game. A little game we now know as Tekken.

Launch

Whilst the initial Japanese launch was considered a success with over 2 million units sold within the first 6 months, the console was still outsold by the Sega Saturn due to the massive success of Virtua Fighter.

The turning point was at the first ever E3 event in 1995 in which they undercut the Sega Saturn launch price by $100 and also had an appearance by Michael Jackson as well as reveals of now iconic games Ridge Racer & Tekken. This led to the PlayStation selling more units in 2 days than the Saturn did in 5 months.

In my home of the UK, the PlayStation outsold the Saturn by a 3:1 ratio. However, that can likely be contributed to Sony having almost 5 times the marketing budget than Sega.

The youth of the 90s

Speaking of marketing, Sony originally massively marketed the PlayStation towards teenagers.

Through this campaign they noticed that adults also reacted positively to marketing geared towards teens.

As the consoles appeal grew, they broadened this approach to younger kids.

The sad part

From all of my research, the part that makes me sad is that through PlayStation destroying the Saturn in sales…

Sega in a last ditch effort released the technically superior Dreamcast.

There will be a post eventually covering the Dreamcast but this console could have been legendary.

It just came at the wrong time.

The Models

As a kid I had the original model, twice. Scary to admit but one of them was chipped and half faulty and the other was unmodified and quite untouched.

Today I have the PSOne, the smaller cutie 3.14 version that was released years later. It even outsold the PlayStation 2 in the year 2000, pretty crazy.

A very rare version of the PSOne exists with an LCD screen attachment, released in 2002. A version of the console any collector would pine for.

Iconic Games

Oh, now this I could talk about all day.

From underrated gems like Tomba and Vagrant Story to simply iconic franchises – Final Fantasy 7, Spyro The Dragon & Crash Bandicoot.

Tekken, Soulblade, Gex, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Legacy of Kain, Grand Theft Auto.

DIGIMON WORLD for crying out loud.

I could be here all day listing games but I’d wear off the letters from my keyboard.

Legacy

The PlayStation began Sony’s venture into the video game world with flying colours.

Winning a console generation with it’s first foray.

Sony have been competitive with every generation since and show no signs of stopping.

But while technology advances with each console, there will never be a console that won my heart like this one. Not even the mighty PS2.

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