Flashback: PlayStation

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The PlayStation was Sony's introduction to the game industry. While at the time the company's success at making games was not guaranteed, its foray into the video game world has proven in the years since the PlayStation's launch to be, at the very least, financially lucrative. Rivalries between Sega, Nintendo, and Microsoft have been both notorious and competitive, and even now the big three continue to duke it out as we head into the next generation of systems.


The PlayStation, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on September 9, 2005, launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, and in the US nearly a year later. Sony was (in)famous for edgy marketing campaigns and (over)saturating the market with a ton of third-party games. Criticism of Sony revealed problems with the PlayStation's hardware and the mediocrity of many of the system's games. However, the PlayStation was competitive and innovative, and it dominated game sales. The second iteration of the PlayStation was called the PSOne, a sleeker but otherwise identical system that was released in 2000.

Competition with the PlayStation came in two forms, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64. Although both systems were competitive in some respects, the Saturn suffered at the hands of an early launch. Released early to vie for a larger chunk of the gaming market, the Saturn didn't have enough games to keep gamer interest. Nintendo, in a sad, ironic twist, had support problems because it stuck with the cartridge format for games. Had Nintendo and Sony maintained their early collaboration on the CD-ROM based add-on to the SNES, things might have turned out a lot differently for the game industry.

Through ups and downs, the PlayStation's theme was games, games, and games. The system is responsible for a lot of franchises that have made their way over to the PS2 (and soon to the PS3). It's also responsible for a lot of games that should never have been made in the first place. Such is the price you pay for having so many games to your name.

One of the PlayStation's other claims to fame was popularizing importing and modding, for better or for worse. The PlayStation support in Japan was arguably better than that in the US, and gamers learned quickly that with many types of games, getting the Japanese version meant getting the exact same gameplay much earlier. Although CD-based games worked for Sony in the long run, they were also easier to copy, and modding ran rampant, especially later in the system's life span.

Nobody could have guessed that Sony would be as successful at video games as it was. But it's clear that Sony would not be working on its third console generation if it hadn't been for the PlayStation.