At the turn In the 1980s and 1990s, the console and video game market was almost completely dominated by two companies – Nintendo and Sega. Their competition was so fierce that it was called the “console war”. There was no shortage of dirty tricks, malicious advertisements, and the competitors even went before the US Senate, where they exchanged accusations about who had a worse influence on children.
Aggressive marketing campaign Sega made it in 1992 thanks to the console Mega Drive (or Genesis) the company from Shinagawa achieved 55 percent. share in the US console market. But then Nintendo delivered a decisive blow. It was the console Super Nintendo (SNES), which in a short time achieved enormous sales success and pushed Sega from the market leader position.
However, the SNES had a drawback. The console only supported cartridges, which had a much smaller capacity than the increasingly popular CDs. And new games became more memory-hungry. In addition, the Kyoto company was aware that Sega was already working on an accessory that added a CD drive to the Mega Drive console. So she needed a technological partner who would help build an optical drive for SNES. And that's where Sony entered the picture.
SNES-CD
In the 1980s, Sony already existed tycoon on the market electronics utility. After all, we are talking about a company that made the world famous Walkman and a range of other groundbreaking audio devices. The then general director of the concern Norio Ohga however, he was not particularly interested in video games. He was convinced to change his position by one of Sony's engineers, Ken Kutaragi. In turn, his love for video games was inspired by his daughter, who spent long hours playing the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Fascinated by the new industry, Kutaragi and his team, but in strict secret in front of the Sony board (with only the tacit consent of President Ohga) he designed Sony audio chip SPC 700. Ultimately, however, it did not go to Sony's own console, but to a new Nintendo device, i.e. the already mentioned SNES.
Both companies were so satisfied with the established cooperation that they decided to continue it. This is how the SNES-CD project was born. The arrangement was simple: Sony would produce a CD drive for the Super Nintendo console and would make profits from the sale of SNES game discs, while Nintendo would make profits from the sale of the console itself, an additional accessory and games on cartridges.
Betrayal of Nintendo
Everything changed in the summer of 1991 during the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It was then that the event that is known today as “the greatest betrayal in the history of the industry.”
On the first day of the fair, nothing heralded what was to come disaster. Sony – as planned – announced its collaboration with Nintendo on the SNES-CD, as well as the launch wash on the original PlayStation console, which was also to be created in partnership with the creators of Mario and support Super Nintendo games.
A day later, at 9 a.m., the president of Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln entered the stage at McCormick Place in Chicago and proudly announced that Nintendo would produce an optical drive for the SNES console in cooperation with… the Dutch Philips.
The reason for the betrayal was to be unfavorable to Nintendo – at least in his opinion Hiroshi Yamauchithe president of the company – an agreement that gave Sony the right to profits from the sale of CDs with Super Nintendo games. There was no such provision in the agreement with the Dutch. The entire profit from the sale of games was to go to Nintendo, and Philips would only earn money from the sale of the drive itself.
Interestingly, even after the “backstabbing”, Sony continued negotiations with Nintendo for the next few months regarding joint publishing of games on PlayStation. Ultimately, the wound inflicted by Yamauchi turned out to be too deep, and the trust in his former business partner was irretrievably lost.
Kutaragi and his revenge
In 1992, the fate of PlayStation hung in the balance. The head of the project, Ken Kutaragi, went to great lengths to convince his bosses that work on the console must continue and that Sony will cope without Nintendo. However, Kutaragi kept bouncing off the wall.
The breakthrough moment occurred on June 24, 1992. That day, a stormy management meeting was held at Sony's headquarters, during which the head of the PSX project once again heard that the project had no chance of success and that Sony should never enter the video game market. Kutaragi put everything on one card. He decided to play on the honor of the company's president. It reminded him of the painful betrayal that had ridiculed Sona.
Are you willing to sit back and accept what Nintendo has done?
– Kutaragi asked in desperation. Norio Ohga took up the challenge. The PlayStation project was saved.
“Szarak” enters the salons
PlayStation debuted on the Japanese market on December 3, 1994. The console definitely stood out from the “square” Nintendo and Sega devices. Sony focused on a modern and streamlined design, which included both the console and the controller. However, the latter case was not without controversy.
When Teisuke Gotoh, the art director, showed the pad to Ken Kutaragi, he immediately rejected the project. Gotoh wasn't going to give up. He went to “complain” to the president of Sony himself, and to Kutaragi's surprise, he thought the idea was great.
PlayStation, however, impressed not only with its appearance, but also with its graphical capabilities. When the company first presented a technological demo of its new device to Japanese game developers, they were amazed.
Especially since in terms of technical specifications, PlayStation – even considering those times – was not a “monster”. The console was equipped with a 32-bit RISC R3000A MIPS processor clocked at 33.8688 MHz, 2 MB RAM, 1 MB VRAM and operated at a maximum resolution of 640×480.
The most important thing, however, were the games, and there were plenty of them on PSX. The best titles for Sony's debut console include: “Ridge Racer”, “Metal Gear Solid”, “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, “Crash Bandicoot” and “Gran Turismo”.
“Two Ninety Nine”
However, the successful debut of PlayStation in its native Japan did not mean that Sony would do equally well on the global market. The most important battlefield was, of course, the United States, where the company had to fight not only with its recent partner Nintendo, but also Sega, which again decided to remind the world about itself, this time thanks to a new console Sega Saturn.
And just like Nintendo a few years earlier, Sega now decided to set a trap for its rival. On May 11, 1995, during the E3 conference in Los Angeles, the boss Sega of America Tom Kalinske announced that Saturn will go on sale “immediately”, w price 399 dollars. This information caused Sony's bosses considerable consternation. They weren't ready for the Saturn's launch so soon and expected both devices to hit store shelves around the same time.
This time, however, the last word belonged to PlayStation. The day after the Sega CEO's speech, a Sony conference was scheduled. President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Olaf Olafsson welcomed the meeting participants and then asked Steve Race, head of SCE's North American division, to deliver a speech. Race came to the podium with a stack of cards, which heralded a longer speech. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Two Ninety Nine
– Steve Race stated, then immediately left the stage. It wasn't any secret news, but simply the price of the new console on the American market. PlayStation was supposed to cost $299, which was as much as $100 less than Saturn. It was a real knockout for Sega.
When September came and PlayStation launched with a bang, everything looked completely different than when the Saturn launched. Although Sega reduced the price of the Saturn by $100, sales of both devices were not at all comparable. PlayStation flew off the shelves as quickly as we could restock
– recalled Lee Hutchinsonan editor at Ars Technica who worked at the Babbage chain of stores in the 1990s.
In just two days, the PlayStation sold more than the Sega Saturn in five months after its premiere, and by the end of the year, the Sony device had already sold over 800,000 copies. The debut of PlayStation in Australia and Europe was also a great success, where PSX was gaining an increasing advantage over the fifth generation consoles from Nintendo and Sega.
Overall to this day Sony sold over 102 million copies of the original PlayStation. However, PSX is not the most popular console in the history of the Japanese manufacturer today. This title is held by its successor, PlayStation 2. However, this is the beginning of a completely different story.