By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo had reached a deal whereby the “Sony Play Station” would continue to have a port especially for SNES games, but that Nintendo would own the game rights and receive most of the profits from the games. The SNES console would still use the Sony designed audio chip.

However, Sony changed their mind and then decided a year later to begin reworking the Play Station idea to help them target the new types of hardware and software. As part of this plan the SNES cartridge port idea was dropped and the space between the words Play and Station was removed.

The final PlayStation was launched in Japan in December 1994 and went on to North America and Europe in September 1995 and Australasia in November 95.  The American price was around about $299.

Sony’s launch was considered to be very successful and there were many titles that went out with the game.  Every genre had games like Twisted Metal, Battle Arena Toshindan, Philosoma, Warhawk and Ridge Racer.  Many of the Namco and Sony launch titles went on to spawn various sequels.

PlayStation had some very unique advertising campaigns to pique the interest of gamers.  They made their advertisements very ambiguous and had gamers debating their meanings for months.  Sony used different types of word-play with ENOS meaning either rEady Ninth Of September or it could be read as Sony backwards if you saw the E as a Y.

Sony was also planning at that stage to develop another Sony-branded console that was Nintendo compatible, but this one would be more like a home entertainment system that would be able play both Super Nintendo cartridges and the new Sony designed CD format.

This was the plan, however, when Hiroshi Yamauchi decided to read the first 1988 contract between Nintendo and Sony, he realised that this agreement would hand all the power and control over to Sony and they would then own all the SNES CD-ROM format titles.  Yamauchi did not like this at all and decided to secretly cancel the plans.  On the day that he was supposed to announce their partnership with Sony, he instead said that Nintendo had now partnered with Philips and would no longer work with Sony.

Minoru Arakawa and Lincoln had secretly flown to the Philips European headquarters to form an alliance with Philips that would now give Nintendo the chance to have total control over the licenses on Philips machines.

Sony was first thinking of stopping their research and quitting their plan but then had a brainwave and decided to rather develop their own complete stand-alone console.  Nintendo was not happy with this and sued them for breach of contract as they said that Nintendo owned the rights to the PlayStation name.  Their case was denied, however, and Sony was given the go-ahead to launch the first ever Sony PlayStation machines.

The PlayStation is a game console that was released by Sony Computer Entertainment back in December 1994.

The PlayStation was the first of its type and because of its popularity there has been many successors and similar consoles produced.  After the PlayStation came the Net Yaroze, a unique black PlayStation with instructions and tools on how to programme PlayStation applications and games.  After that Sony released the PS one that was slightly smaller than the PlayStation and then the PocketStation that was a handheld game.

It was not long before PlayStation 2 was launched and after that a revised and more slim-line PlayStation 2.  After that Sony launched the PlayStation portable, the PSX in Japan and finally (up to date) the PlayStation 3.  The PlayStation is the first video game console that ever sold more than one hundred million units.

Game Over is a book written by David Scheff that covers gaming console history.  He said the PlayStation was first conceptualised in 1986 but there were problems as the technology was not yet evolved enough.  The game’s rewritable magnetic nature made it too easy to erase everything and the discs were too open to piracy.

The CD-ROM/XA console was simultaneously developed by Phillips and Sony.   Nintendo approached Sony and asked them to develop a type of CD-ROM add-on that was called the “SNES-CD”.  Sony agreed and the development began.  Nintendo chose to work with Sony because of Ken Kutaragi, also known as “The Father of the PlayStation”.

Already on the market for 11 years, PlayStation is definitely one of the biggest success stories of the video game industry.  Production came to an end on March 23 in 2006.

The PlayStation had a number of different variants throughout its production run.  Each variant included a change in the part number.  If you look at it from the outside, the biggest change was the reduction in the number of connectors on the outside of the unit.

The PS one was based on substantially the same hardware as the SCPH-900x and 750x models, but had no serial port and the memory card ports were moved to the main PC Board. The power supply was replaced with a DC to DC converter that was also situated on the main PCB.

With these early units, some gamers had problems with skipping full-motion video or heard physical “ticking” noises coming from inside their PlayStations.  This problem was caused by the vents that were situated poorly and caused the machine to overheat.  What then happened was that the console’s plastic mouldings warped very slightly and started to create knock-on effects with the laser assembly.

Sony then released a “Dual Shock” version, that had a console which included a controller that had 2 analogue sticks with a built in force-feedback feature.  Some coloured versions then began to appear including blue ones, green ones and white ones.

The PS1 (model number of SCPH-1001) had an extra advantage of having incredibly good sound that rivalled CD players from audio manufacturers.

It seems that every successful game and console will have some fans that will try to copy and pirate it.

A number of hacked units were sold on the second-hand game market and proved to be popular because they were able to run multi-regional games as well as CD-R copies of games.  The individuals that sold them were able to sell them for double the normal price because it allowed gamers to save money on pirated games.  The blue consoles had some reported CD problems but the DTL-H110x units are much more reliable than even the original DTL-H100x models.

The mod chip allowed the PlayStation console’s capabilities to be increased, and many options were made available. By the end of its life-cycle most people with some soldering experience could modify the console.  These modifications allowed individuals to play games from various other regions such as NTS titles on a PAL console.  Gamers could also play copies of games on this console without any restrictions.

These Mod chips allowed gamers to play games that were recorded on a regular CD-R. This created a host of games that were developed without official approval and by using free GNU compiler tools, as well as companies reproducing original discs. This feature made these consoles attractive to both programmers and pirates.

Sony did not make it easy for people who insisted on creating copied games, however.  The discs were difficult to copy and definitely impossible to copy on any recordable media.

The PlayStation 3 sports two additional USB ports, 3 Gigabit ethernet ports and 2 HDMI ports.  Sony unveiled the PS 3 to the world in May, 2005, during the 2005 E3 conference.

They did not present a functional version of the console at the 2005 Tokyo Game Show, although they did have demonstrations (such as Metal Gear Solid 4 game) at both events. These took place on development kits and similar PC hardware.  They also showed video footage of what the PlayStation 3 specifications would look like.

Sony initially planned for the system to have 2 HDMI ports, 3 Ethernet ports and 6 USB ports.  These numbers were later reduced to 1 HDMI port, 1 ethernet port and 4 USB ports, presumably to help cut costs.  They brought out 2 different configurations: a 60 gig console and a 20 gig console with a price difference of about 100 dollars.

The 60 gig console has some really flashy features such as a Wi-Fi internet connection, a HDMI port, more than one flash card reader and a chrome trim with the silver logo.

The PS 3 was, as is always the case, first released in Japan in November 2006 at 07:00 am. It was reported that a large number of systems were bought by businessmen who bribed Chinese nationals in order to buy the consoles. This gave the businessmen the opportunity to sell the units on Ebay.  In the first 24 hours of its introduction in Japan an astonishing 81,639 systems were sold.