30 years ago the PlayStation conquered the world

Thirty years ago the PlayStation conquered the world. The little gray box that catapulted Sony into the empyrean of video games once exclusive to Atari, Sega and Nintendo. PlayStation it was Sony’s first foray into the world of video games and when it hit shelves in Japan on December 3, 1994, the company had to sell a million units to cover costs. Ultimately, the console became a legend, selling more than 102 million units, helping launch many of the industry’s most beloved franchises, and positioning Sony as the top dog in an extremely profitable industry. “PlayStation changed the history of video games“said Hiroyuki Maeda, a Japanese specialist in the history of video games, “It really transformed everything: hardware, software, distribution and marketing“. One of the keys to its success was the appeal to older people of what until then had been dismissed as a children’s pastime. From the beginning, the company made it clear that it wanted to destroy this image, to distinguish itself from Nintendo , which was already a dominant player in the industry in the mid-1990s, but whose games were aimed at very young people. The history of the PlayStation can be traced back to a rift between the two large Japanese companies that had in the late 1980s. united theirs efforts to develop a version of the Super Nintendo console with a built-in CD player Nintendo suspected that Sony was using the project to enter the industry of video games and abruptly canceled the partnership in 1991. “Sony was in a humiliating position,” says Maeda, so she decided to pursue the project alone. The hardware proved to be revolutionary, CD-ROMs were cheaper and stored much more data than the cartridges used by Nintendo and other consoles.

And to further distinguish itself, Sony courted a young adult audience with fighting games like “Tekken”, horror with “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” and military-inspired titles like “Metal Gear Solid.” Advertising also followed a more adult path. David Lynch was enlisted to direct commercials for the PS2 launched in 2000, conjuring up a nightmarish vision of floating heads and talking ducks, certainly not intended for an audience of children. “The older audience obviously had better purchasing power than children,” says Philippe Dubois, founder of M05, a French association that aims to preserve digital heritage.

Fierce competition and future scenarios

The PS2 is still the most successful console in history, with over 160 million units sold, but in 30 years the competition has intensified and the technology has been perfected. While Sega and other rivals have fallen into oblivion, Microsoft entered the fray with its Xbox e Nintendo is still on the scene with its Switch console. But the industry is going through tough times: The surge in popularity and investment during the pandemic has subsided, and Sony’s PlayStation division recently laid off hundreds of workers. Many analysts also predict that cloud gaming will soon make consoles obsolete.

Sony seems undeterred, recently launching an updated version of its PS5 with a marketing push that highlighted new artificial intelligence features. Bloomberg reported that the Japanese company is also planning a new portable version of the PlayStation, which would once again pit it against old rival Nintendo, the undisputed king of portable devices. However, for purists, few innovations have been as great as the original console’s ability to handle 3D graphics. The technology was instrumental in the appeal of classic games like “Tomb Raider” and “Final Fantasy VII.”