

The making of the Sony PlayStation - CrazedGeek
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2012/08/feature_the_making_of_the_sony_playstation

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samlittlewood
A big plus was Sony's attitude to developers, my (edited) comment from when
the Edge Online article was posted:

The landscape into which it arrived:

Games for the successful cartridge based machines were selected and scheduled
by Nintendo & SEGA. There were a limited number of slots per season -
competition within genres was avoided, often in favour of in-house games or
those from allied publishers.

There was a wave of CD based machines at various levels of development. These
were characterised by wince inducing hyperbole, a lack of attention to any of
the media of which they were supposed to represent the convergence, and an
inability to engage with the developers who had any chance of creating titles
that would sell.

I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag (why
embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made exactly to
your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media 'visionaries',
and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games developers who
were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were being told that
they were irrelevant, and to shut up.

This was not a happy place for games developers - stuck between the politics
and uncertainty of the cartridge machines, and the approaching new-media
desert.

Into this arrived Sony:

They had bought a UK game developer - Psygnosis, who had (IIRC, courtesy of SN
Systems) sorted out a good set of PC based development tools with english
documentation. Once they had something to show, they invited ~100 UK
developers to Great Marlborough Street for a chat. Other than knowledge, the
giveaways ran to a cup of coffee & a couple of biscuits (1). The tech. demos
using a slow prototype (so T-Rex's head only) were fascinating, but other
things were more significant: The attendance list demonstrated to those within
it that Sony really 'got it' - this was a peer group of people who had made,
and were making, games in the UK, and having assembled that audience, the
Psygnosis staff (a part of that peer-group), explained how they wanted to help
us make games - IIRC, not much persuading was needed.

A memorable moment for me that captured that attitude was the opening of the
first Devcon in London: Several hundred developers in a huge conference room -
Phil Harrison(IIRC) walks onto the stage and casually asks if it is anyone's
birthday today. A few hand's go up. "Happy Birthday - here, have a
Playstation" and indeed, those bodies got machines (at that time, rarer than
hen's teeth))

(1) There may also have been sandwiches.

~~~
incision
>"I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag
(why embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made
exactly to your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media
'visionaries', and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games
developers who were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were
being told that they were irrelevant, and to shut up."

Neat imagery.

You should start a blog on the topic. I thinking you've got a number of pre-
Internet stories from the industry that folks would like to read.

------
incision
Same topic, more comprehensive article from a 2009 issue of EDGE magazine.

<http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-playstation>

------
padobson
_Numerous third party studios were getting stuck into PlayStation game
production, and a string of classic titles began to emerge._

This is the biggest reason Sony won. Its the oldest lesson in our business.
You can have the greatest hardware in the world, the best operating system,
the best API - the best _platform_ \- but if you don't have the great software
that your users crave, its just ornamentation. Sony never had the best games,
but they always had the biggest selection - something to satisfy whatever you
were hungry for.

 _In Europe especially Sony displayed a masterly grasp of how to market a
games machine to a more mature audience; the company knew that those gamers
which had grown up with the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles were gradually reaching
adulthood and would therefore require more “grown-up” gaming experiences._

This was the first time that I began to understand that hype and flash could
woo consumers into a frenzy even if there was no substance. Tomb Raider was
crap. You never had to spend 10 minutes lining up a jump in a Super Mario
game. Resident Evil was garbage. No one ever picked up a controller to play
Legend of Zelda and spent two hours learning how to walk. Metal Gear Solid was
guilty of all the FMV tricks that Sony had accused Phillips of doing. You
didn't get any of that in Goldeneye.

Winning isn't always about having the best product. Sometimes its about having
the most product, or the flashiest product, or the cheapest product. There's
no better lesson to prove that than the Sony Playstation

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rekisu
After reading the article for a second time, I realized there's an interesting
spin one can take with the whole Nintendo double-crossing Sony thing.

It sounds to me more like Nintendo was pitching a business venture to
Sony/Phillips and Sony just went too far on their own with it. The article
talks about an "initial agreement" made between Nintendo and Sony and then
"Later, it was supposed, Sony would be permitted to produce its own all-in-one
machine...", notice how it wasn't something that was agreed upon by both
parties, but rather something entirely from Sony's end.

My take is that Nintendo put forward this venture to both Sony and Phillips,
and Sony came up with an initial idea and proposed that to Nintendo. While
Nintendo were considering the proposal Sony got too hyped up in the idea and
"supposed" additional areas in which they could generate more revenue from the
venture, completely ignoring Nintendo in the process. In the meantime Nintendo
got a better offer from Phillips and initiated the process to accept their
proposal. Suddenly CES rolls around and Sony with their heads in the clouds
made the assumption they got the deal and made the public announcement, only
to have Nintendo later correct them.

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kitsune_
I remember feeling excited about the cd-add-on for the SNES... Ahh, tempus
fugit.

