‘This day will never come again, so let me have this moment.’: The 30th Anniversary of PlayStation
By Alfie Stubbs, Third Year History
On the 3rd of December 1994, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) would revolutionise the gaming industry forever with the release of their first home video game console, the PlayStation. Whilst its initial release in 1994 was solely within Japan, they quickly went on to release the PlayStation worldwide in the following year.
As a fifth-generation console, the PlayStation had to contend with already successful gaming companies that had a strong foothold in the industry, such as Nintendo and Sega. Yet, despite this, it became the first console to ship over 100 million units in less than a decade, outselling its competitors who sold a combined total of 42 million units. But the story of PlayStation doesn’t start here, it starts with a man named Ken Kutaragi.
Often dubbed the “Father of PlayStation’’, Ken Kutaragi created the idea of PlayStation whilst he was a Sony executive managing one of Sony’s hardware engineering divisions. He had envisioned the future of gaming to be one that used 3D technology, but as Sony considered video games to be ‘toys’ they wanted as little to do with the industry as possible.
However, Kutaragi persuaded Sony to design and manufacture a sound chip for the upcoming 1990 release of the Nintendo Famicom (better known as the SNES outside of Japan, or the Super Comboy in Korea), and later worked alongside Nintendo to create a CD-ROM version of the Super Famicom. The move to CD technology and its rise in popularity at the time was due to increasing cartridge prices (both to produce and to buy as a consumer) as well as the greater storage available on CDs compared to cartridges. Therefore, at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony announced their partnership with Nintendo to create the CD version of the Super Famicom. But the day after, Nintendo announced something quite different.
Nintendo stated that they would continue to make the same console with the same technology, but in partnership with Phillips instead. With the original partnership off the table, Sony President Norio Ohga appointed Kutaragi the sole mission of creating a console that could rival the behemoth company Nintendo. By using cutting-edge 32-bit technology, Kutaragi achieved his goal of creating a console that could facilitate 3D graphics, and with this, the PlayStation was born.
The original PlayStation was home to some of the most influential video games of all time, spawning franchises that have flourished and garnered huge fanbases globally. Games such as Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Silent Hill, whose presence is still vividly felt in the video game sphere today. This is especially true in our current era of remakes, such as the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Delta.
In 1999, Ken Kutaragi became Chairman and CEO of SCE, but later departed from Sony altogether in 2007. However, this has not prevented PlayStation’s success. Since PlayStation’s release in 1994, SCE (who changed to Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2016) have released four mainline consoles, and two handheld consoles, as well as various other forms of media such as their recently concluded magazine, Play. With the vast success of PlayStation that can be seen over the last 30 years, Ken Kutaragi and Sony certainly proved that “Play Has No Limits”.
Footnote: Part of the title for this article was taken from a particularly sombre exchange between the protagonist, Cloud Strife, and one of the deuteragonists, Tifa Lockhart, in the original Final Fantasy VII (1997).
For more information on the history of PlayStation, visit: https://playstationmuseum.com/index.html
Edited by Ben Bryant