Description

Background

The reason for the development of the PlayStation derived from a failed collaboration with Nintendo. Sony and Nintendo had teamed up to produce a CD-unit for SNES called the “Play Station” or “SNES-CD”. Nintendo, however, stopped the collaboration, as the companies could not come to an agreement on the distribution of the profits. Nintendo made an offer to Sony to only produce the hardware, but this was declined. Nintendo turned to Philips. This collaboration was also prematurely terminated, which eventually led to Philips being allowed to use Nintendo characters for its own CD-i console. After two failed attempts to collaborate with two established parties, Sony then announced that it would still release the CD-unit, but now in its own console.

Rise of the Playstation

The Playstation was a 32 bit console. Sony put a lot of resources into developing and marketing the console. The Playstation had impressive 3D graphics and after its release immediately made Sony an important player in the gaming console market. The Playstation also benefited from the mistakes Apple, Nintendo and Sega made with respectively Pippin, Nintendo 64 and Saturn. Although these were all powerful consoles, it turned out that it was very difficult to convert this power into good games. They drove developers directly into the hands of Sony, so that the Playstation built up an extensive game library within a short time. This resulted in the fact that the original Playstation is being considered one of the best-selling consoles ever created.