The Evolution of the Sony PlayStation

With the PS4 making its big debut, we take a look back to see how the iconic game console has evolved.

In 1988 one company sat firmly on top of the home video gaming market: Nintendo. The 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) had ruled for years, despite competition from Sega and Atari. And with the Super NES in the wings for its 1990 premiere, it looked like Nintendo would never topple.
Especially not because of competition from Sony; in fact, Sony was Nintendo's partner.
Back then the days of cartridge gaming were waning as the CD-ROM was being embraced. Sony, working with rival Philips, had already created the CD-ROM/XA format, discs that supported compressed audio and video and could be easily read with extra hardware. Computers were using it, so naturally game systems would be next. Sony was going to be there to bring that format to the Super NES. They called it Super Disc.
The problem was, Nintendo and Sony never trusted each other—not in the least. Sony's planned development was to make a Super Disc that would read everything and make Sony the only licensor of the tech. Nintendo didn't like that. (Sony and Philips, likewise, couldn't get along. Sensing a pattern? Sony doesn't always play nice with others.) It all came to a head in June 1991 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago. Sony announced the Play Station (with a space), which was the Super Disc, but so much more: it could also read Super NES cartridges and play music. Being the behemoth it is, Sony had a whole music division and movie studio (Columbia Pictures) to work with.
The day after the Play Station was unveiled, Nintendo said it was working with Philips on the CD-ROM drive for the Super NES; Sony looked like dupes. CEO Norio Ohga was furious.
But like good businessmen, they had to work together. Sony still wanted to port Super NES cartridges and Nintendo was using Sony's audio chip in the Super NES—a chip Ken Kurtaragi himself had developed in secret for Nintendo while working at Sony.
But Ohga was still smarting. He told Kutaragi to get working on something new, and that something is why Kutaragi is now known as "the father of PlayStation."

PlayStation
Rather than upset the apple cart even further, Kutaragi and his team were sent to work in a different division: Sony Music. Over the next two years, several things happened: Sony worked with Philips (again) to create the first DVDs. Sony almost struck a deal to work with Sega, but instead stuck with Nintendo (again). And Sony never manufactured more than about 200 Play Station consoles. This was all despite the formation of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) in Japan in November 1993 and Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA) in May 1994.
The era of the so-called fifth-generation video game consoles had hit. The first of these 32-bit capable, CD-ROM-based devices was 3D0 and Atari Jaguar in 1993. Finally, Sony execs gave the go-ahead for a full build of the PlayStation.
In 1994, perhaps the biggest turning point came when SCE showed off 3D video game possibilities to a couple of potential partners: Electronic Arts and Namco.
The real competition began later in 1994 when the Sega Saturn and original Sony PlayStation debuted in Japan within weeks of each other. The $299 PlayStation, which didn't make it to North America until the following year, cost $100 less. (Nintendo then began its ongoing late-to-the-party streak with the cartridge-only Nintendo 64, released in 1996.)

Not long after the SCE division became the most successful of all Sony's divisions. The PlayStation's worldwide sales by the time it was discontinued in 2005? 102 million units in 9.5 years. (That's in combination with the PSOne from 2000, a PlayStation redesigned for portability which, for that year at least, outsold the original PS.) Compare that with the Nintendo 64's 32.93 million. Even Microsoft's then chairman, Bill Gates, expressed admiration for the console.
The best-selling game of all time on the PlayStation? Sony's own racing simulator, Gran Turismo. Around 10.85 million copies had sold as of April 2008. It certainly didn't hurt GT sales that it was also playable on the next-gen PlayStation 2.

  PlayStation 2 (PS2)
PlayStation was dominant for years and didn't face much competition until the sixth generation of consoles. That era arrived in Japan in 1998 with the Sega Dreamcast, the first console to embrace the Internet as part of gaming; there was even an integrated Web browser, albeit with connection over a 56K modem. Sega's success looked promising after initial sales of 500,000 units in just two weeks at the start of North American sales in September 1999.
While the Dreamcast certainly did a lot to restore Sega's bruised reputation, it wasn't enough, especially after Sony announced the imminent PlayStation 2 at the Tokyo Game Show later that month. Dreamcast sales went down the toilet and Sega halted production on March 30, 2001. (Refurbished Dreamcast machines continued to sell in Japan until 2007.)
The PlayStation 2 had a lot to live up to and managed just fine, reaching 150 million units sold by February 2011—only 10 years and 11 months after its initial Japanese release in March 2000, according to Sony. (The most current number is 155 million as of March 2012—12 years after the initial release). Backward compatibility—the ability to play games from the last generation console—made the transition smooth for PS-philes.

Not that the PS2 didn't have some issues. It was hard to find, with consoles selling for more than $1,000 on eBay. And the initial game slate was not stellar. It had disc-read errors so bad it got sued. But as the only major new console it had the 2000 holiday shopping season almost entirely to itself (Dreamcast notwithstanding). Plus it could play DVDs—and that was the year The Matrix was hot.
Nintendo's cheaper GameCube and Microsoft's first Xbox didn't arrive in North America until November 2001. Sony knocked the PS2 price down to $199 in response, equaling the GameCube. By 2002 Sony realized online gameplay, personified by the Xbox's breakout hit Halo, was a drawcard and began offering a network adapter. In 2004 the slimline PS2 shipped—but almost didn't due to manufacturing and shipping problems.
Sony announced the PS2 would be discontinued worldwide in January 2013.

PlayStation 3 (PS3)
The Xbox 360 led the wave of seventh-gen consoles in 2005, with the Xbox Live network for online play propelling the Xbox's big gains that year. The PlayStation 3, while announced at CES in 2005, didn't make it out of the gate in either Japan or North America until November 2006. And it faced manufacturing issues, not least of which was building in full support for Sony's Blu-ray video format. But that move above all else probably ensured the success of Blu-ray over HD-DVD by Toshiba. The PS3 was also the first console to support full high-definition video at 1080p.
What really hurt the PS3 was its$499.99 or $599.99 price tag for its 20GB or 60GB models. The Xbox 360 cost $100 less and the Nintendo Wii, while lacking the graphics to equal either rival, was cheaper still at $249.99.
What hurt more? The crazed demand that found people shot or robbed when trying to get a PS3. Ouch.

Like the PS2 before it, the PS3 eventually slimmed down with a new model in August 2009. It was 33 percent smaller and consumed one-third less power. If that wasn't enough, the current version of the PS3 is the "super-slim" that weighs about 4.3 pounds. Sony also finally launched a free online multiplayer gaming network—PlayStation Network—that garnered 90 million users by early 2012. A paid tier of service called PlayStation Plus offers customers even more. It got hacked in April 2011 to much hullabaloo.
As of November 2013, the PS3 has sold 80 million units. The Xbox 360 has sold about the same. The real winner of the seventh-generation? The Nintendo Wii, with 100 million units sold worldwide.
  PlayStation 4 (PS4)
The eighth-generation is upon us. Wikipedia says it began with the Nintendo Wii U last year—finally, Nintendo out in front again! But all eyes are on the big two: the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It's unlikely 150 million consoles will ever be sold like the PS2, given the competition from not just consoles, but the flood of handhelds (like Sony's own PlayStation Vita) and game-capable smartphones.

Both PS4 and Xbox One debut in North America first, at $399.99 and $499.99, respectively. Both use AMD chips for the CPU and graphics and both have 500GB hard drives, Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi, 4K video support, and more. Neither will be backward compatible with games from the previous generation of consoles. Aside from Microsoft's Kinect camera, the playfield is pretty level.
And there are plenty of reasons to get one of them even if you don't play games—like the fact that both now support Blu-ray discs, provide access to all the major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video; and will sell or rent you content directly.

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