The Making of the PlayStation

Edge Online has an in-depth look at the beginnings of the first PlayStation console. It starts at Sony's partnership with Nintendo, the purpose of which was to integrate a CD-ROM drive into the SNES. A falling out between the companies led Sony to stubbornly pursue a market dominated by Nintendo and Sega. The console's technology and Sony's unusual position in the industry quickly attracted the interest of many developers and publishers, eventually leading to sales that emphatically won that round of the console wars. "'There was a huge resistance inside the company to actually being in the videogames business at all,' explains Harrison. 'The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of PlayStation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years.'"

Comments

Re:Sony has lost its way

[thetoadwarrior]

That is a load of rubbish. If that were any where near remotely true then there would be more stories about it as 360 fanboys would have a total wet dream if they could find something to justify the shoddy hardware Microsoft still produces.

The 360 launched nearly 4 years ago and they still have problems including the E74 error and the problems are so common that they had to extend the warranty to keep people happy and put off the risk of a class action suit.

Continuing to have problems 4 years later is not putting any effort into fixing the fundamental problems with the system. The fact is they wanted to be first to market and to do so they had to let the quality drop. The 360 probably won't ever be problem free.