PS

The PlayStation was released for sale on December 3, 1994 in Japan, on September 9, 1995 in the US. UU and on September 29, 1995 in Europe. It all started with a broken contract with Nintendo in the late 1980s. Nintendo agreed with Sony, in the late eighties, to develop for its successful Super Nintendo an appendix to incorporate games on CD, in addition to the traditional cartridge. The giant of video games, however, broke with the Japanese technology, then neophyte in the industry, because it considered that it gave too much control and benefits derived from the sale of games on CD. Ken Kutaragi, who at the time was a computer engineer from Sony passionate about video games, proposed a console that combined the graphic capabilities of a workstation and the Sony CD-ROM drive. For 2 years, Ken Kutaragi unsuccessfully searched for someone somewhere in the Sony audiovisual group to support his project. He moved, along with his research, from one laboratory to another, until Teruo Tokunaka took him to see then President Norio Ohga to present his idea. The dome of Sony, reluctant to enter the market of video games from the beginning, intended to end the adventure here. However, Kutaragi's stubbornness kept the company going. The company derived the project, with Kutaragi at the head, to Sony Music to not take responsibility for the unpredictable consequences of the bet. The collaboration, in the end, was fundamental for the production of CDs. Until 1993, the company would not have its own section of video games, Sony Computer Entertainment. Sony launched the PlayStation in Japan on December 3, 1994. The success was immediate. The key was in the facilities offered by the company to video game developers, excited about the great technical possibilities, the three dimensions and the CD. The developers took too many economic risks creating cartridges for Sega or Nintendo; Sony, on the other hand, offered all the facilities to be able to count on a varied catalog of games. Soon joined the big ones of the sector. Titles such as Gran Turismo, Metal Gear or Final Fantasy are the fundamental history of videogames. The jump to Europe and the United States was equally successful. Sony opted to lower the price of its console below the cost. The launch in America was $ 299, well below the 399 of its main competitor, the Sega Saturn, completely swept. Contrary to the industry trend, Sony intended to obtain benefits derived from software, not just hardware. And it did: the profits of Sony Computer Entertaiment came to assume 90% of the company. The first version of the PlayStation exceeded one hundred million consoles sold nine years after its launch.