Playstation Controversy

To celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the PlayStation in 2005, Sony Italy released an advertisement portraying a young man wearing a crown of thorns (the thorns being made of triangle, square, circle and cross symbols, the labels on the buttons of Playstation controllers), on his head. The ad was captioned with "Dieci anni di passione" (In English, this translates to "Ten years of passion.") The ad, assumed to be a takeoff of Mel Gibson's controversial 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, was met with outrage from the Vatican. Sony apologized and stopped displaying the ad for forever...

PSone a.k.a PlayStation One

PSone with LCD screen and a DualShock

The PSone (also PSOne, PS one, or PS1), launched in 2000, is Sony's smaller (and redesigned) version of its PlayStation video game console. The PSone is about one-third smaller than the original PlayStation (38mm × 193 mm × 144 mm versus 45 mm × 260 mm × 185 mm). It was released in July 7, 2000,^[3] and went on to outsell all other consoles—including Sony's own brand-new PlayStation 2—throughout the remainder of the year. Sony also released a small LCD screen and an adaptor to power the unit for use in cars. The PSone is fully compatible with all PlayStation software. The PlayStation is now officially abbreviated as the "PS1" or "PSone," although many people still abbreviate it "PS" or "PSX". There were three differences between the "PSone" and the original, the first one being cosmetic change to the console, the second one was the home menu's Graphical User Interface, and the third being added protection against the mod-chip by changing the internal layout and making previous-generation mod-chip devices unusable. The PSone also lacks the original PlayStation's serial port, which allowed multiple consoles to be hooked up for multi-TV multiplayer. The serial port could also be used for an external mod-chip, which may have been why it was removed, although size-constraints may also be to blame...

credits: wikipedia.org

Do you know what is Net Yaroze?

Net Yaroze is a version of the PlayStation called the Net Yaroze was also produced. It was more expensive than the original PlayStation, colored black instead of the usual gray, and most importantly, came with tools and instructions that allowed a user to be able to program PlayStation games and applications without the need for a full developer suite, which cost many times the amount of a PlayStation and was only available to approved video game developers. Naturally, the Net Yaroze lacked many of the features the full developer suite provided. Programmers were also limited by the 2 MB of total game space that Net Yaroze allowed. That means the entire game had to be crammed into the 2 MB of system RAM. The user couldn't officially make actual game discs. The amount of space may seem small, but games like Ridge Racer ran entirely from the system RAM (except for the streamed music tracks). It was unique in that it was the only officially retailed Sony PlayStation with no regional lockout; it would play games from any territory.

credits: wikipedia.org

PlayStation early games

One of PS early games-Metal Gear Solid

Titles

Well known titles on the PlayStation include Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy VII, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver , Metal Gear Solid, Parasite Eve, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Spyro The Dragon, Tekken, Tomb Raider, and Wipeout . The very last game for the system was FIFA Football 2005. As of May 18, 2004, Sony has shipped 100 million PlayStation and PSone consoles throughout the world. As of September 2006, 7,902 software titles have been released worldwide (counting games released in multiple regions as separate titles) with cumulative software shipment of 961 million units. The PlayStation logo was designed by Manabu Sakamoto, who also designed the logo for Sony's VAIO computer products.

Production run

Having lasted over 11 years, the PlayStation has enjoyed one of the longest production runs in the videogame industry. On March 23, 2006, Sony announced the end of production...

source: Wikipedia.org

Playstation first launching...

An original PlayStation control pad. This model was later replaced by the Dual Analog, and then the DualShock.

The PlayStation was launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, the United States on September 9, 1995, Europe on September 29, 1995 and Asia-Pacific in November 1995. In America, Sony enjoyed a very successful launch with titles of almost every genre including Battle Arena Toshinden, Twisted Metal, Warhawk, Philosoma, Wipeout and Ridge Racer. Almost all of Sony's and Namco's launch titles went on to produce numerous sequels.

Launched price in the American market: US$ 299.00 [1], a price point later used by its successor, the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation was also able to generate interest with a unique slew of ad campaigns. Many of the ads released at the time of launch were full of ambiguous content which had many gamers rabidly debating their meanings. The most well-known launch ads include the "Enos Lives" campaign, and the "U R Not e" ads (the "e" in "U R Not e" was always colored in red, to symbolize the word "ready", and the "Enos" meant "ready Ninth Of September", the U.S. launch date). The Enos ad could also be read as Sony written backward with phonetic sound of "E" replacing the "y". It is believed that these ads were an attempt to play off the gaming public's suspicion towards Sony as an unknown, untested entity in the video game market. The PlayStation 3 slogan, "PLAY B3YOND", resembles this slogan, as the 3 is red...

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More History...

Just surfing around the 'Google'...and guess what, found another articles about Sony Playstation history...good to read it (if you're an Otaku) . Here it goes:

The first conceptions of the PlayStation date back to 1986. Nintendo had been attempting to work with disk technology since the Famicom, but the medium had problems. Its rewritable magnetic nature could be easily erased (thus leading to a lack of durability), and the disks were a piracy danger. Consequently, when details of CDROM/XA (an extension of the CD-ROM format that combines compressed audio, visual and computer data, allowing all to be accessed simultaneously) came out, Nintendo was interested. CDROM/XA was being simultaneously developed by Sony and Philips. Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the "SNES-CD". A contract was struck, and work began. Nintendo's choice of Sony was due to a prior dealing: Ken Kutaragi, the person who would later be dubbed "The Father of PlayStation," was the individual who had sold Nintendo on using the Sony SPC-700 processor for use as the 8 channel ADPCM sound synthesis set in the Super Famicom/SNES console through an impressive demonstration of the processor's capabilities.

Sony also planned to develop another, Nintendo compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both Super Nintendo cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. This was also to be the format used in SNES-CD discs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendo's leading position in the video gaming market.

In 1989, the SNES-CD was to be announced at the June CES . However, when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo, he realized that the earlier agreement essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNESCD-ROM format. Yamauchi was furious; deeming the contract totally unacceptable, he secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Indeed, instead of announcing their partnership, at 9 am the day of the CES, Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that they were now allied with Philips, and were planning on abandoning all the previous work Nintendo and Sony had accomplished. Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa had, unbeknownst to Sony, flown to Philips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance of a decidedly different nature — one that would give Nintendo total control over its licenses on Philips machines.

The 9am CES announcement was a complete shock. Not only was it a complete surprise to the show goers (Sony had only just the previous night been optimistically showing off the joint project under the "Play Station" brand), but it was seen by many in the Japanese business community as a massive betrayal: a Japanese company snubbing another Japan-based company in favor of a European one was considered absolutely unthinkable in Japanese business.

After the collapse of the joint project, Sony considered halting their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had developed so far and make it into a complete, stand alone console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S. federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the Play Station, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name^{[citation needed]}. The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction. Thus, in October 1991, the first incarnation of the new Sony PlayStation was revealed; it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever produced.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the "Sony Play Station" would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, at this point, Sony realized that the SNES technology was getting long in the tooth, and the next generation of console gaming was around the corner: work began in early 1993 on reworking the "Play Station" concept to target a new generation of hardware and software; as part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped, the space between the names was removed, and the PlayStation was born...PLAYSTATION

Great history! More to comes...

source: wikipedia.org

The History Begins...

This is my 1st post on this blog, so i'm gonna tell you some history about where Sony Playstation arise. Playstation is my favorite gaming console so far since years. Now i'm a PS2 owner, hope can buy PS3 soon! Ok! enough talking, straight to the point:-

The history of the Playstation begins in 1988 when Sony and Nintendo were working together to develop the Super Disc. The Super Disc was going to be a CD-ROM attachment that was intended to be part of Nintendo's soon to be released Super Nintendo game. However, Sony and Nintendo parted ways business-wise and the Super Disc was never introduced or used by Nintendo. In 1991, Sony used a modified version of the Super Disk as part of their new game console - the Sony Playstation. Research and development for the PlayStation had began in 1990, headed by Sony engineer, Ken Kutaragi.

Only two hundred models of the first Playstation (that could play Super Nintendo game cartridges) were manufactured by Sony. The original Playstation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the Playstation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information as well. In 1994, the new PlayStation X (PSX) was released that was no longer compatable with Nintendo game cartridges and only played CD-ROM based games. A smart move that soon made Playstations the best selling game console...

More info to comes...
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