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PlayStation is 10 years Old Today

Posted by Zonk on from the i-love-my-old-PSOne dept.

pluke writes "ComputerandVideoGames.com reports that today is the 10 year anniversary of the PlayStation launch in Japan. Facing stiff competition from the already entrenched Sega Saturn it went on to conquer the market and define the modern games industry. Happy Birthday old boy, though I must confess was always a Saturn man." Sniff...so many memories.

18 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. And to think... by pappy97 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Playstation and PS2 never would have happened if it weren't for Nintendo pulling the plug on the CD-ROM add-on for SNES.

    People say Nintendo's biggest mistake was Virtual Boy. I say it was dropping this project allowing Sony to get into and dominate the console market.

    1. Re:And to think... by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "People say Nintendo's biggest mistake was Virtual Boy. I say it was dropping this project allowing Sony to get into and dominate the console market."

      Sony didn't need Nintendo's CD-ROM to do this. It's not like Nintendo showed them how to make a console. The Playstation was coming one way or another. Either it would have gone out as the SNES CD (thus dilluting Nintendo's brand. The reason the project broke down was that Sony wanted to have its name plastered all over it) or as a stand alone unit. Either way, Sony wins, Nintendo doesn't make as much money. (Nintendo is far from being dead despite being in 2nd/3rd place.)

      Nintendo's biggest mistake is still the Virtual Boy.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    2. Re:And to think... by pappy97 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Go take a look at history of consoles in '90's. Sony NEVER had any intention of releasing a stand alone console. They never even thought about going into the console market until Nintendo dropped that project.

      If Nintendo doesn't drop that project, perhaps that unit as an SNES bombs and Sony never thinks twice about consoles.

      To say that Sony would be even a player in the conole market if Nintendo didn't drop that project is pure speculation.

  2. Launch titles.... by hollismb · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, memories. The two launch titles for the PS1 (yes, there were only two!) were Toshiden and Ridge Racer. Toshiden was a graphical masterpiece that played like Street Fighter, and also, um, sucked. Ridge Racer, on the other hand, was an amazing game, and an arcade perfect conversion to boot. It had only one track, that had a couple different branching paths (based on difficulty) and that was it. Nonetheless, the hardcore, broke college boys that we were, we'd race that damn track over and over and over again, trying to shave precious hundreds of seconds off our times and striving for the perfect lap (which was basically impossible to do two laps in a row).

  3. greatest consol ever by VendingMenace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    in my humble opinion, PS1 is the greatest consol that has ever existed yet. I own an xbox, ps2 and gamecube and while they are quite good and have impressive abilities wich outstrip the ps1 however, there is just something special about the ps1 and the line up of games that it had.

    Just a quick review, from the top of my head...
    Twisted metal
    Castlevania SYmphony of the Night (best game ever, i think)
    Tony hawk series
    FF VII
    metal gear solid
    tekken 3
    and the list goes on and on...

    I could go on forever, PS1 truly was the greatest of the consols in the golden age of the consol.

  4. PS VS SS by computertheque · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Playstation came bringing with it one very important factor, which is what I believe is the only reason it became as large as it did. It was easier to program for than the Sega Saturn. I'm sure that after a while Sony did things to entice publishers, but that is the main reason it got the upper hand. It's no secret that developers did not like the dual processor nature of the Saturn, and the Playstation's better internal structure allowed for titles to be made with ease. The Saturn did 2d very well, a key reason that it plays home to so many Capcom fighters. People seem to forget that the Saturn did very well in Japan, and was still doing moderately well even after the Playstation was killing in America. The surprising thing about the entire story is how loyalties were changed from the established name of Sega. That's not to say that Sony wasn't an established name, but not in gaming. It truely was a case of the underdog's success. While I do like what the Playstation brought to the game world, I do not favor how Sony has brought things into the mainstream. Sure it allows for more growth, but it has also brought about many unfavorable things. Your average game is now made for the lowest common denominator, resulting in unchallenging difficulty and bland properties. Don't even get me started on the Urbanization of games. Definately a key moment of gaming history.

    1. Re:PS VS SS by ZosX · · Score: 2, Informative

      Preview is your friend. It takes what, 5 seconds to look at your formatting? Secondly you should really try to break up your writing into paragraphs anyways with the first sentence defining the rest of the paragraph.

      Oh and you don't have to use line breaks. Just format the text how you would like it and post it as plaintext. Slashcode will recognize carriage returns and such from the text box.

      --
      zosxavius photography
  5. I disagree by Carlos+Rodriguez · · Score: 5, Informative

    While I agree that Sony would sooner or later have released its own console, it would have arrived later rathen than sooner if not for Nintendo's actions. Had Nintendo just killed the project Sony would quite likely still have been allied to Nintendo for a while. In fact, according to "Revolutionaries at Sony", a Sony approved "biography" of the original Playstation, Ken Kutaragi, the creator of the Playstation, had tried to convince Sony's upper management to release their own console, but the plan had always been rejected because Sony was happy just being a provider of parts for the Nintendo consoles.

    That same book details what happened. The problem was that Nintendo, instead of just pulling the plug for Sony's original Playstation (which was a SNES/CD-ROM hybrid platform), went behind Sony's back and formed an alliance with Philips to develop a SNES CD-ROM add-on. One day after Sony announced that it was working along with Nintendo to develop the Playstation, Nintendo announced that it was working with Phillips to develop the true SNES CD-ROM and that Sony's project wouldn't come to light. This conference made Sony's management appear as complete fools.

    Kutaragi saw his chance and told the President of Sony that they could go ahead with the Playstation project and release it as a stand-alone console. The main reason why Kutaragi's plan was approved was not because of a great business plan, but because he stressed how it would be the best way to get even with Nintendo.

    Virtual Boy was a mistake, true, but while it was a dismal failure it didn't cause Nintendo's presence in the market to shrink one fourth of what the original PS did just a couple of years after its introduction.

    1. Re:I disagree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Disclaimer: I am _not_ NCL or SCEI, but the following is fact.

      Nintendo's deal with Philips was not a nonsensical backstab at Sony, as this official Sony biographer claims. (That is merely a case of the "winner" writing history.) It was a response to a Sony licensing agreement that limited Nintendo's ability to have any say in what happened on the Playstation side.

      Basically, Sony was restricting Nintendo's ability to license (and therefore profit from) CD-based games. The PlayStation was, in Sony's view, a Sony machine that also played SNES games. You want to make Playstation games? You go through Sony, and Nintendo is out of the picture. Otherwise, you make a SNES game and, hey, Playstation will be able to play it.

      As such, Sony expected to hold total control over the CD-ROM business, while Nintendo's technology (SNES) became less and less relevant with time. In time, SNES compatibility would not have mattered, much like the way PlayStation is now a dead-end compared to PS2 development.

      Additionally,_ALL_ of Nintendo's future technical development (future consoles, etc.) would depend on a partnership with Sony, giving them leverage to squeeze more and more out of Nintendo. If they moved away from that partnership, they would have already lent credibility and market experience to a competitor with huge killing power.

      So what did Nintendo do? They took a chance to get out of the situation they were stuck in: They partnered with Philips (a non-Japanese technology provider) and announced an exclusivity agreement. This was a move to sour Sony on progressing with their plans to enter the console space. This was Nintendo's gamble, and they lost.

      So is Nintendo's handling of Sony their biggest mistake? In the big picture, yes. Sony snuck into the console industry under Nintendo's nose using their own platform, and when Nintendo finally noticed what was happening, they were almost powerless to stop it.

      Virtual Boy...big deal. Every technology company has their own Virtual Boy. Microsoft themselves have had the equivalent of at least three Virtual Boys in their lifetime, and yet they have the power to dictate policy to national governments. But I digress.

    2. Re:I disagree by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "The PS hurt nintendo, but so did their refusal to launch a disc based console."

      That isn't all that clear. The fact is, Nintendo got 30 million units out the door while Sega... well their Saturn was a huge flop despite being CD based. Nintendo could not have released a CD based system to compete with the Playstation and survived. In order to get a reasonable cost, they'd have to toss the 64-bit processor and go with something less distinct than Sony's offerings. Additionally, they would have made less money on media royalties going with a CD based system. The gamers out there may not care, but look what happened to Sega.

      A lot of people keep saying that the N64 failed. 30 million units is not a failure. A lot of people keep saying that the N64 lost out due to a lack of a CD-ROM drive. I can sort of agree with that. It would have been cool for that machine to have an optical drive. But not if the machine ended up costing $350 dollars. Nintendo would still have had a huge uphill battle. They did the right thing by making a cheaper machine that had better graphic capabilities.

      The real key to Sony's success wasn't so much the hardware, though that helped. Rather, it was that it flooded store shelves with titles. Yes, many of them were awful. But when it came time to decide which machine to get, it was hard to ignore that the Playstation was where the action was. That is where Nintendo 'failed'. They're just not getting the developer volume they need.

      Fortunately, though, Nintendo has created its own audience. Nintendo has loyalty that Sony just cannot have until they start creating their own AAA titles. In other words, Sony's boat could easily be rocked by another company with whiz-bang technology. It could be Nintendo. It could be Microsoft. Heck, it could be IBM if they were so inclined.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  6. Third-Party Developers by vasqzr · · Score: 3, Interesting


    That is the only thing Sony did right.

    The Playstation sucked as far as hardware goes. Long load times, crap graphics, the console itself wore out in a short amount of time (only a new PSX sits right side up), the controller is an ergonomic nightmare.

    I'm going to state the the SNES was the greatest console to ever grace the earth. Now that I have that out of the way...

    The PSX was expensive and not very good. Why did it succeed? Nearly anyone could develop for it. It wasn't THAT hard to program for. Unlike the Saturn. You could distribute on CD-ROM. Unlike Nintendo 64 where you had to use expensive ROM chips which only came from, you guessed it, Nintendo.

    Nintendo had problems back in the SNES/Genesis days with third parties. Green blood in Mortal Kombat? Missing Fatalities? People don't want watered down games. Sony fulfilled the gore/sex that adult gamers wanted.

    The games were usually graphical nightmares, and the console wasn't impressive AT ALL compared to a PC in 1995. A Pentium 100MHz was pretty good in software rendering, and if you throw in a 3Dfx card that came out about a year later...It's no contest. When I saw my friends raving over a PSX FPS, and the sports games, I went back to playing my GLQuake, and NHL 96 at 640x480.

    Compare an SNES to a PC game in 1990. No comparison.

    Sony won by having a TON of games. They also didn't care what you made. They were glad to have you as a developer. They also made demo discs popular. You can't distribute cartridges with a magazine or pass them out at sporting events. Well, you could, but you'd lose a ton of money.

    1. Re:Third-Party Developers by Fred+Or+Alive · · Score: 2, Informative

      Personally I think the original digital PSX controller is fine. It's just the lazy way they hacked the analogue contollers on - it's really annoying the way the left hand analogue stick isn't in a good position especially. (Unless you play games where analogue controls don't matter). Analogue triggers would be nice as well...

      --
      10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
      20 GOTO 10
  7. Shit. by jkujawa · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well.

    I feel old now.

    Keep forgetting where I put my dentures, too.

    1. Re:Shit. by Dunce · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well that is great!!! Now we have 2 gen of Video game geeks.

      You want to hear something funny, I had pages from EGM taped to my wall of the Saturn. Oh well, here is to our youth.

  8. Re:without the PSX by xgamer04 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Here's some history on Xenogears, which actually began production in 1987.

    --
    When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
  9. You feel old now? by Lord+Kano · · Score: 5, Funny

    Go to the mall. Look for cute girls. They are all too young for you.

    I've been feeling old since I was about 22.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  10. LOL by News+for+nerds · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >A Pentium 100MHz was pretty good in software
    >rendering, and if you throw in a 3Dfx card that
    >came out about a year later...It's no contest. When
    >I saw my friends raving over a PSX FPS, and the
    >sports games, I went back to playing my GLQuake,
    >and NHL 96 at 640x480.

    That kind of PC costed over $2500 then IIRC.

  11. Resident evil by dcstimm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Resident evil is what made me buy the playstation, I remember going to my local video game store and dropping down 399 or 299.. forget the price for my shiny new psx. and then going to kmart and getting resident evil (because they were the only people that had it) and having them look though every drawer to find it. Oh the memories. God those were good times. But wow resident evil blew me away the games graphics and FMV were very very impressive. Thank you sony for making my childhood a better place. But that experience is still shadowed by almost every release of a mario game. Mario 1, (first video game ever), Mario 3 (jaw dropped when seeing the rotating question mark boxes), Super Mario Brothers, and of course Mario 64! (good lord that game made me excited).....

    --
    keanmarine.com