The Making of the PlayStation 125
Edge Online has an in-depth look at the beginnings of the first PlayStation console. It starts at Sony's partnership with Nintendo, the purpose of which was to integrate a CD-ROM drive into the SNES. A falling out between the companies led Sony to stubbornly pursue a market dominated by Nintendo and Sega. The console's technology and Sony's unusual position in the industry quickly attracted the interest of many developers and publishers, eventually leading to sales that emphatically won that round of the console wars.
"'There was a huge resistance inside the company to actually being in the videogames business at all,' explains Harrison. 'The main reason why the Sony brand wasn't really used in the early marketing of PlayStation was not necessarily out of choice, but it was because Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand. They saw Nintendo and Sega as toys, so why on Earth would they join the toy business? That changed a bit after we delivered 90 per cent of the company's profit for a few years.'"
Re:The real problem was Blu-Ray (Score:4, Informative)
Most PS3s cannot play PS2 games, and of the ones that can there are inconsistancies that depend on exactly which model you got (software vs hardware emulation).
Also, most of the end-of-cycle (read "great") ps2 games won't play.
Happy 200th, Edge (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Taking over the market? (Score:1, Informative)
> There's a considerably higher ratio of shovel ware to good games than the other consoles.
This is hardly something new to the Wii. It's simply a function of popularity.
The point of shovelware is basically to quickly cash in on something popular. The games need to be produced quicky, at very low cost, and ideally using some kind of existing character or franchise to try to move copies of the game. Failing that, rip off something else that's currently popular.
Since this is basically a hit-and-run tactic, there's really no spare time or budget left for porting to multiple platforms. For it to work, you have to pick the single largest market, and go after that.
At the moment, that's the Wii. The Wii took over this title for the PS2. For a brief period during the transition, many of these shovelware games were produced for both platforms, but they tend to be Wii-exclusive now. The PS2 took over this title from the PS1, which took over from the SNES, which took over from the Genesis, which took over from the NES...
Seriously - go and look at the NES library. It's terrible.
Re:The real problem was Blu-Ray (Score:1, Informative)
I have a Wii, a ps2, a ds, the original xbox and a 360, i don't have a PS3 because you can't copy the games, and homebrew is crippled on it (no access to video hardware)...
Like it or not, piracy is a great way to increase product exposure at low cost (i wouldnt buy games if i couldnt pirate them, and i dont have a ps3 because it cant run copied games).
Re:Sony has lost its way (Score:2, Informative)
That said, I do remember reading an interview with Kutaragi where he said they did plan on using a second Cell for graphics at some point but realized it wouldn't work; I assume this was at a very early stage in the project.
Re:The real problem was Blu-Ray (Score:3, Informative)
As much as I expect your comment to get modded into the sweet abyss of slashdot, still you make a valid point.
My original xbox dominates my living room because it is still better then anything from the current generation. I have it fully modded with linux, which affords me the ability to access my computer on the other side of the house via network and watch every bit of media on it without the waste of burning discs or the hassle of using a thumb drive. I can play all the old roms using the controllers effortlessly, including even N64. My library of games is epic and some of the games never were even released (RED STAR suuuch a good game). I own a wii, 360, ps2 (bought day 1 900$) and a slew of retro consoles I have dragged out of peoples trash. The only thing that gets more attention then my original xbox (Girfriends, children, friends) is my core i7 I am talking on now. To bad I had to eat rice for a month straight to afford it.
Re:And as with all their products... (Score:2, Informative)
But do they let you use bog-standard SD and SDHC cards?
Re:Sony has lost its way (Score:3, Informative)
I think Sony's consoles are even less reliable than the 360. Don't forget that Microsoft had to increase the warranty period for the red ring problems. A lot of Playstations and Playstation 2s stopped reading discs out of warranty and Sony did nothing about it. Both the original consoles (not so much the slim second generation ones) were terrible for that, and a friend of mine working at game retailer says it really killed the second hand console market for them.
The 360 has it's problems, maybe even the 20%+ failure rates rumoured, but at last they make some effort to fix them.
Re:Know your enemy. (Score:4, Informative)
Nintendo makes money on the hardware so they probably don't care as such. I think it should be that way though and the companies that pump out crap need to die off.
Re:The real problem was Blu-Ray (Score:4, Informative)
They won't? News to me, because my PS3 has played every PS2 game I've thrown at it, and only two have had issues bad enough that I wouldn't want to play them on a PS3: Tekken Tag Tournament (runs at half speed) and Fallout Brotherhood of Steel (really bad texture glitching). I have one PSone game with bad enough graphical glitching that it can't effectively be played, The X Files graphic adventure game, but the same glitching happens on a PS2 too, some too smart for their own good developer didn't follow Sony's technical docs properly.