Sony celebrated the 30th anniversary of the original PlayStation (PS1) last year, and this year marks the 30th anniversary of the console’s official launch in the West. Former SIE Global Studios President Shuhei Yoshida Recently accepted GamesIndustry.biz Exclusive interview, talked about the history he experienced personally─from the failure of Nintendo cooperation to the birth of PlayStation.
Back then, PlayStation was a CD-ROM expansion unit built for the Super Famicom/SNES. Shuhei Yoshida recalled: “The system was almost completed at that time, and several games were even completed. I also played a space shooting game, but it was still based on 16-bit technology and its performance was very limited.”
Nintendo’s “break-off” incident: Sony completely awakens
At the 1991 CES show, Nintendo shocked the industry by suddenly announcing a partnership with Philips and abandoning Sony on the spot. This “break-up incident” once caused Sony to lose face, but it also unexpectedly became the most critical turning point in the company’s history.
Yoshida pointed out: “In fact, that is a good thing for Sony. Look at SEGA’s Mega CD. Adding a CD player to a 16-bit console is a dead end. Nintendo almost did us a big favor by canceling the cooperation – otherwise the Sony team will always be trapped in the Super Nintendo’s 16-bit architecture and have no chance of independent development.”
From Abandoned to Dominated: Sony’s Revenge and Rebirth
After Nintendo terminated the cooperation, Sony’s internal Ken Kutaragi vowed to build a console of his own. Everyone knows the result: the PlayStation came out in 1994, setting off a 32-bit gaming revolution and rewriting the entire industry.
Yoshida said with a smile: “In a sense, Nintendo has created its biggest competitor. But this is healthy for the industry. Now that Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation are all going in different directions, this kind of competition will make the gaming industry more exciting.”
A coincidence of history and an inevitable necessity of industry
If the Nintendo PlayStation was successfully launched that year, Sony wouldsharpIt may still be just a subsidiary brand of Nintendo hardware-no “Final Fantasy VII”, no “Gran Turismo”, and no thirty-year PlayStation legend. That sudden “breakup” not only created Sony, but also defined the entire modern game industry.