The making of the Sony PlayStation

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2012/08/feature_the_making_of_the_sony_playstation

by CrazedGeek • 14 years ago

89 6 14 years ago

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incision2• 14 years ago

Same topic, more comprehensive article from a 2009 issue of EDGE magazine.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-playstation

kitsune_• 14 years ago

I remember feeling excited about the cd-add-on for the SNES... Ahh, tempus fugit.

samlittlewood• 14 years ago

A big plus was Sony's attitude to developers, my (edited) comment from when the Edge Online article was posted:

The landscape into which it arrived:

Games for the successful cartridge based machines were selected and scheduled by Nintendo & SEGA. There were a limited number of slots per season - competition within genres was avoided, often in favour of in-house games or those from allied publishers.

There was a wave of CD based machines at various levels of development. These were characterised by wince inducing hyperbole, a lack of attention to any of the media of which they were supposed to represent the convergence, and an inability to engage with the developers who had any chance of creating titles that would sell.

I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag (why embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made exactly to your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media 'visionaries', and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games developers who were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were being told that they were irrelevant, and to shut up.

This was not a happy place for games developers - stuck between the politics and uncertainty of the cartridge machines, and the approaching new-media desert.

Into this arrived Sony:

They had bought a UK game developer - Psygnosis, who had (IIRC, courtesy of SN Systems) sorted out a good set of PC based development tools with english documentation. Once they had something to show, they invited ~100 UK developers to Great Marlborough Street for a chat. Other than knowledge, the giveaways ran to a cup of coffee & a couple of biscuits (1). The tech. demos using a slow prototype (so T-Rex's head only) were fascinating, but other things were more significant: The attendance list demonstrated to those within it that Sony really 'got it' - this was a peer group of people who had made, and were making, games in the UK, and having assembled that audience, the Psygnosis staff (a part of that peer-group), explained how they wanted to help us make games - IIRC, not much persuading was needed.

A memorable moment for me that captured that attitude was the opening of the first Devcon in London: Several hundred developers in a huge conference room - Phil Harrison(IIRC) walks onto the stage and casually asks if it is anyone's birthday today. A few hand's go up. "Happy Birthday - here, have a Playstation" and indeed, those bodies got machines (at that time, rarer than hen's teeth))

(1) There may also have been sandwiches.

incision2• 14 years ago

>"I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag (why embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made exactly to your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media 'visionaries', and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games developers who were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were being told that they were irrelevant, and to shut up."

Neat imagery.

You should start a blog on the topic. I thinking you've got a number of pre-Internet stories from the industry that folks would like to read.

padobson• 14 years ago

Numerous third party studios were getting stuck into PlayStation game production, and a string of classic titles began to emerge.

This is the biggest reason Sony won. Its the oldest lesson in our business. You can have the greatest hardware in the world, the best operating system, the best API - the best platform - but if you don't have the great software that your users crave, its just ornamentation. Sony never had the best games, but they always had the biggest selection - something to satisfy whatever you were hungry for.

In Europe especially Sony displayed a masterly grasp of how to market a games machine to a more mature audience; the company knew that those gamers which had grown up with the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles were gradually reaching adulthood and would therefore require more “grown-up” gaming experiences.

This was the first time that I began to understand that hype and flash could woo consumers into a frenzy even if there was no substance. Tomb Raider was crap. You never had to spend 10 minutes lining up a jump in a Super Mario game. Resident Evil was garbage. No one ever picked up a controller to play Legend of Zelda and spent two hours learning how to walk. Metal Gear Solid was guilty of all the FMV tricks that Sony had accused Phillips of doing. You didn't get any of that in Goldeneye.

Winning isn't always about having the best product. Sometimes its about having the most product, or the flashiest product, or the cheapest product. There's no better lesson to prove that than the Sony Playstation

rekisu• 14 years ago

After reading the article for a second time, I realized there's an interesting spin one can take with the whole Nintendo double-crossing Sony thing.

It sounds to me more like Nintendo was pitching a business venture to Sony/Phillips and Sony just went too far on their own with it. The article talks about an "initial agreement" made between Nintendo and Sony and then "Later, it was supposed, Sony would be permitted to produce its own all-in-one machine...", notice how it wasn't something that was agreed upon by both parties, but rather something entirely from Sony's end.

My take is that Nintendo put forward this venture to both Sony and Phillips, and Sony came up with an initial idea and proposed that to Nintendo. While Nintendo were considering the proposal Sony got too hyped up in the idea and "supposed" additional areas in which they could generate more revenue from the venture, completely ignoring Nintendo in the process. In the meantime Nintendo got a better offer from Phillips and initiated the process to accept their proposal. Suddenly CES rolls around and Sony with their heads in the clouds made the assumption they got the deal and made the public announcement, only to have Nintendo later correct them.

The making of the Sony PlayStation

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