Happy Birthday PlayStation, You're 15 in the USA
The PSX hits a decade and a half.
I've been a gamer all my life, though admittedly I started at the dawn of the Nintendo age with the original NES. But still, I feel old as the original PlayStation appeared in North American stores around this time 15 years ago. (As a side note, the Dreamcast just passed its 11th birthday.)
It was this week in 1995 that Sony started on its quest for dominance of the video game industry – something that it would have for a decade.
"When you look in the rearview mirror at what was happening in 1995 you see that the video game industry was an entirely different animal. Cartridges were still the preferred medium, and the market was a modest $2.6 billion in sales revenue annually. Many critics thought that a disc-based console with a lot of horse power would shoot over the heads of consumers, but our users proved them wrong," said Jack Tretton, CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC. "Now, we are seeing a convergence of video games and home entertainment, and a market that is a robust $20 billion in revenue. In the next 15 years and beyond PlayStation will continue to bring new and more immersive experiences, like stereoscopic 3D, augmented reality as well as genre-defying gameplay into consumer living rooms."
In honor of the 15 year anniversary and over the next several months, Sony is rolling out the follow promotions:
- Free downloadable PS3 & PSP static themes available for download on the PlayStation Store starting today
- Weekly discounts on select PS One titles within the PlayStation 15th anniversary collection page, available in all SCEA territories on PS3, PSP & Media Go Storefronts. In addition to a 50 percent sale on Super Rub A Dub (Super Rub A Dub offer good from Thursday, September 9, 2010 - through Monday, September 20, 2010).
- A PlayStation Home commemorative Original PlayStation (PS One) ornament for personal spaces available starting today.
Check out Sony's 15th Anniversary page here, as well as the bonus infographic below.
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I still have my old Playstation, Great for my Squaresoft RPGs on it.
Was my first and only console. Now I'm a PC gamer...
Happy Birthday Broseph.
ps2 was a legend
Oh how I miss my PS2. Oh well, my PS3 fills its place nicely.
15 years ago?? Time is going by too fast. I was 10 years old..holy crap.
Silent Hill was the **** on the PS One. And Affleck was the bomb in "Phantoms."
I thought piracy was killing the business!?
15 years is a bit depressing. I remember the PS/Saturn days well...
On a side note...
Wow we don't want your crap erst. Seriously only morons go to those sites. Everyone here votes you down before any real amount of people view your ads.
Amazing, the PS has had 2 sequels in the same time Duke Nukem 3D hasn't even managed 1 yet.
I still have my original Playstation. I have lots of the games too. Man they look horrible by comparison and they are much shorter than I remember them being, but some are still fun. I was 13 when it came out, dang that seems like it wasn't all that long ago though.
those it sound strange that after a console that could be easly pirated and at the same time the console market explodes?
Happy birthday Playstation!! I remember the day I got you, you wonderful thing. Can't believe it has been so long!
I got it the day it came out too, I was only 5 years old. I've had every sony console since then. I need a new PS2 though, mine is finally falling apart, it's taken a beating the poor thing, and I still want to play my PS2 games.
More importantly, Happy Birthday Dreamcast, 11 years old.
Silent Hill was the **** on the PS One. And Affleck was the bomb in "Phantoms."
That, resident evil 2 and twisted metal 2...legendary games (more so the latter).
twisted metal 2, man i stayed up alot of nights, and missed alot of schoolwork to that game.
Even though they made a comeback with the Wii, I bet for the longest time Nintendo had to seriously regret screwing Sony over in regards to the original incarnation of the PlayStation ,that being a CD add-on for the Super NES/Famicom. Nintendo paid for 10 long years and 2 consoles before they finally overcame that mistake. I just think though, what could have been if they had stayed together and worked together as a team, instead of being bitter rivals.
Love me some Super Rub A Dub.
What does Dreamcast, a epic fail that Sega was gonna pull the plug just like they did with Saturn, 32X, Sega CD and Genesis, Nomad and Gamegear have to do with Playstation?
Are you in love with it so much because of the Microsoft logo that helped make it easy to develop a bootable line of code to pirate games making it easy to just download and burn CDs back then specially when Sega rushed out the console instead of planning it out as a high spec machine with a DVD drive?
FAce it Marcus Yam your a Sony hater, I bet you were never there for Sega when they launched their systems and you just cuddle right next to your RROD Xbot machine to keep Steve Balmer and Bill Gates with extra paychecks for money they don't even know what to do with it.
Sony actually changed and revolutionized console gaming by constantly upping the technology every time while Sega just could not handle copying Nintendo's conservative movements and just spent money like crazy by green lighting every prototype and dropping support then worst of all getting influenced by Microsoft into dropping a Dual SH4 CPU set up when Sega's top dev teams had years of experience on Saturn's Dual SH2s just to throw it all away for Direct X and bend over right in front of Microsoft with they XBox jammed into Sega.
Playstation stayed steadily pushing technology forward, how come you don't congratulate the N64 for being the first console to host 64bit software microcode games late in its lifecycle?
Why do you think Microsoft has been paying off game developers who made games that became popular, famous and system sellers during the Playstation 1 and 2 days? yet on MS's own console all of their inhouse dev teams are falling appart being one trick ponies while screwing the PC into games drought?
The line just shows how biased and fanboy ridden a site that is suppoed to be professional is supposed to be, its really sad that true innoviation gets ridiculed by fanpersons of OS monopolies you don't have a Futuremark 3dMark benchmark for Unbutu/Linux do you?
Yeah I know you weren't there to play a Master System, buy a Genesis, a 32X, buy an X-eye then rent and later buy a Saturn, rent a Dreamcast in December 1998 then buy one on launch day and buy all the big games that later Xbox owners refused to buy.
Amazing, the PS has had 2 sequels in the same time Duke Nukem 3D hasn't even managed 1 yet.
dont count that yet , dNF only been in development for 12 years not 15
15 years ago?? Time is going by too fast. I was 10 years old..holy crap.
and i was 16 , (turning 31 on the 22nd of this month actually)
Even though they made a comeback with the Wii, I bet for the longest time Nintendo had to seriously regret screwing Sony over in regards to the original incarnation of the PlayStation ,that being a CD add-on for the Super NES/Famicom. Nintendo paid for 10 long years and 2 consoles before they finally overcame that mistake. I just think though, what could have been if they had stayed together and worked together as a team, instead of being bitter rivals.
nintendo didnt "screw" sony over, sony was trying to make loop holes in a contract that didnt have loop holes. if any thing they are teh ones that screwed nintendo over , that fact aside though ,it is a sahme they couldn'tahve just worked together, either way thing woulkd ahve worked out very differnetly if they had , more than likely sega would not have kissed hardware good bye. it'spossible HD DVD would now be the next gen movie format as well,since part of sony'sgame plan was incorperating blu ray into thier console , ahd sony not beena games hardware manufacture ,that could have played out very differently. every oen gets this bad taste in thier mouth it seems when peoepl think fo hd dvd possibly winnign that war , but hoenstly consider this , 8 track tapes were far superior than cassettes yet casettes won that battle , same for beta max video , the reason why those lost though was they were propriety formats made by a very few small companies ,thus every oen woudlavhe had to pay them royalties , much like every oen ahs to pay sony royalties for blu ray now, so ask ytourself is it really good that blu ray won ? but ah well i'm getting side tracked ,point is the gmaing world as well as disk format world would be drastically different if sony ahdn't boken from nintendo.
My favorite line of consoles ever
PS3 took some time though.
damn I am getting gold
I don't think so dark.. Only time I can even see nintendo really hurting was the gamecube. The n64 was awesome. And realitivy speaking sony, and ms are the new guys still. Nintendo has seen competitors come and go.
Granted sony, and ms both have plenty enough backing not to worry so much if something flops.
The original Playstation was my least favorite console I've ever owned in the past 30 years. Sure there were a few great games - every console had a few great games - but this was the dawn of 3D hardware acceleration on the PC (3Dfx Voodoo!), which made every game for the Playstation look like crap. Sony's insistence on making every game on Playstation in 3D using hardware that was outdated within its first year just made things worse. At least it was a great era for PC gaming.
I still have the original playstation but it's chipped, so I can play imports and backups. Still Have my jap Tekken 2, 3. Playing my US version soul calibur was great. PS games are still good but the graphics on some games look awful now.
Any other important events happen this week in history?
Didn't think so.
twisted metal.
The original Playstation was my least favorite console I've ever owned in the past 30 years. Sure there were a few great games - every console had a few great games - but this was the dawn of 3D hardware acceleration on the PC (3Dfx Voodoo!), which made every game for the Playstation look like crap. Sony's insistence on making every game on Playstation in 3D using hardware that was outdated within its first year just made things worse. At least it was a great era for PC gaming.
that every console not just PS1 , when the ps1 first released it was alittle ahead of pc vid cards at teh time ,liek every console release it is quickly surpassed by pc hardware but graphics are not every thing, some of the games on ps1 were great and they brought many pc titles to ps 1 for sconsumers that couldnt afford gaming pc's (which was the vast majority of people then).
Now dont get me wrong i'm nto tryign to defend sony .. hoenstly i tend to avoid sony consoles on principle because they are "trendy" and most their games follow that line. and i relaly don't like the controllers either. that sid i'm msotlya pc gamer myself, jsut not into bashing other peoppels choices when they cant afford a gamign rig.