GAMING
APRIL 9, 2021
the glorious family of sony playStation game consoles
Today you can find PlayStation game consoles all over the world along with their vast variety of game titles.
Sony PlayStation game console was developed by Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive from Sony hardware division. It was began in 1984 when he attending a presentation at Sony’s Information Processing Research Center, he was amazed by the Sony 3 Dimensional (3-D) computer graphics in real time. From that time, Kutaragi then had the vision and obsession to change the future of video gaming machines.
In 1988, Nintendo and Sony had a joint project to develop the Super Disc. They intended to create a CD-ROM for the upcoming Nintendo’s 16-bit console, the Super Famicom (SNES). The deal was Sony would design a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES and a standalone CD-ROM/SNES console titled “PlayStation”.
In June 1991 at the Chicago Consumer Electronic Show (CES) held in USA, Sony introduced the PlayStation game console. There were only 200 models of the early PlayStation that could play Super Nintendo games. However, later in the show, Nintendo contradicted Sony’s announcement by publicly announcing a separate deal with Philips to release a CD-i add-on for their SNES console.
After further negotiations between Sony and Nintendo, the “PlayStation” project was over. Ken Kuntaragi was furious by Nintendo’s step and met President of Sony, Norio Ohga. He explained that Sony should continue developing their own video game console project. Just like Kuntaragi, Ohga was also angered for Nintendo breaking the deal and gave green light to him to proceed.
Three years after that, the first Sony PlayStation (PS) game console was released in Japan in 1994, then shipped to the rest of the world in the next following year.
PlayStation 1
In 1993, Sony formed Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Game publishers like Electronic Arts and Namco started to approach Sony in 1994 after Sony demonstrating their hardware. The first PlayStation console, PlayStation 1 was released in Japan in December 1994 then North America in September 1995 and Australia in November 1995.
It was immediately becoming very popular in the market due to its relative cheapness and superior launch titles compared to the Sega Saturn.
Officially there were about 7.981 games released for PS 1. The biggest selling title was Gran Turismo. PS 1 was the first console to sell over 100 million systems worldwide. The PS 1 was the first gaming console to make use of the CD ROM format.
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 and faced high anticipations from gamer worldwide at the time. It has two main ability : Able to play all PS 1 games with full backwards compatibility and play the new DVD video discs format. Moreover, in the early 2000’s the internet had already become an important factor in gaming so Sony added internet capabilities to PlayStation 2, giving people ability to feel gaming experience from the internet.
The PS 2 console is still the most successful home console in history. With 150 million units sold worldwide and around 3.800 titles of game in the market. It was even still being made up until the end of 2012. The best selling game titles were Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas and Gran Turismo 3 : A-Spec.
PlayStation 3
The PlayStation 3 was released in Japan and North America in November 2006 while Europe and Australia received the PlayStation 3 starting March 2007. It was the first to feature a Blu-Ray player format, this step was also helpful to promote Sony’s disc format to become more common in people’s home entertainment libraries.
The console was sold out in short time in Japan with many attractive game titles available in stores. The highest selling title for PS 3 so far is Gran Turismo 5. But this time Sony faced difficult competition for PS 3 as Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 also had good market share. The console did not live up to the prerelease hype like PS 1 or PS 2 did before.
PlayStation 4
In November 15, 2013 the Playstation 4 console was released in North America and November 29th for Europe and Australia. Released in Japan for PS 4 console was in early 2014. But this time the console won’t be backwards compatible with older PS machines. There is no region locking for PS 4 games so it makes people able to resell and trade their games from all continents.
PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5 console was released on November 12, 2020 in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. From the technical specs the PlayStation 5 is over 5 times more powerful than the PlayStation 4. According to Sony, its hardware will allow it to render video games up to 120 frames per second (fps) and maximum resolutions up to 8K.
This console is very hard to find in store today because scalpers always buy the stock as many as possible and resell it up to twice as much as the official retail price. Their operation causes thousands of consoles disappear in the open market, making it harder for average buyers to get their hands on this new generation of gaming console.
A PS 5 version with a disc drive costs you $499 in store, if you buy this online from a scalper online you’d have to pay as much as $999. And they don’t seem to feel bad about it all.
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