Two decades of gaming as Sony celebrate birth of PlayStation

Twenty years ago, this month, a small grey box made its debut in Japan — and changed the entertainment landscape forever.

In December 1994, Sony’s PlayStation gave birth to the global gaming phenomenon, paving the way for an era of revolutionary 3D graphics, engrossing gameplay, and complex virtual worlds.

Gran Turismo, Tekken, Final Fantasy, and Crash Bandicoot took the world by storm and helped build Sony’s multibillion-dollar franchise in the process. Titles such as Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were so popular they were later made into films.

To celebrate its anniversary, Sony has released a limited-edition PS4 featuring the classic logo and sporting the original grey finish in homage to the first PlayStation.

The company made exactly 12,300 of them to mark the date of the original launch which was December 3, or 12/3. While the commemorative consoles are popular, some avid gamers are taking their fandom to the next level — one eBay user managed to sell the Anniversary Edition PS4 for €16,190 after 34 bids while another raked in €12,164 after 106 bids. The consoles were originally sold for €400 in the US and €500 in the UK.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, the hashtag #20YearsOfPlay was trending earlier this month with users expressing their favourite PlayStation memories, reminiscing about favourite characters and waxing nostalgic about gameplay audio.

However, the PlayStation didn’t originate as a standalone console — it was supposed to be a CD add-on for Nintendo’s SNES.

The deal soured however, and when Nintendo pulled out, Sony president Norio Ohga instructed his engineers to keep working on the technology. The resulting console was announced in 1993, under a working title of PS-X, and the next year went head-to-head with Sega’s Saturn and the Nintendo 64.

But the PlayStation as we know it very nearly took a different direction. Early on, Sony entered discussions with Sega to see if they could develop a console together. However, Sega’s managers refused to consider the deal.

Six years later, the PlayStation2 was launched, surpassing its predecessor by selling more than 155m units.

Last Christmas the PS4 easily outstripped its rival but while Sony has won the battle for now, the war is far from over.