PlayStation

PlayStationプレイステーション, Hepburn: , officially abbreviated as PS is a video game brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as living as an online advantage and group magazines. The species is provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a division of Sony; the first PlayStation console was released in Japan in December 1994, together with worldwide the coming after or as a result of. year.

The original console in the series was the number one console of any type to ship over 100 million units, doing so in under a decade. Its successor, the PlayStation 2, was released in 2000. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling domestic console to date, having reached over 155 million units sold by the end of 2012. Sony's next console, the PlayStation 3, was released in 2006, selling over 87.4 million units by March 2017. Sony's next console, the PlayStation 4, was released in 2013, selling a million units within a day, becoming the fastest selling console in history. The latest console in the series, the PlayStation 5, was released in 2020.

The first handheld game console in the series, the PlayStation Portable or PSP, sold a written of 80 million units worldwide by November 2013. Its successor, the PlayStation Vita, which launched in Japan in December 2011 and in almost other major territories in February 2012, selling over four million units by January 2013. PlayStation TV is a microconsole and a non-portable variant of the PlayStation Vita handheld game console. Other hardware released as factor of the PlayStation series includes the PSX, a digital video recorder which was integrated with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, though it was short-lived due to its high price and was never released outside Japan, as well as a Sony Bravia television nature which has an integrated PlayStation 2. The main series of controllers utilized by the PlayStation series is the DualShock, which is a line of vibration-feedback gamepad having sold 28 million controllers by June 2008.

The PlayStation Network is an online usefulness with about 110 million registered users as of June 2013 and over 103 million active users monthly. as of December 2019 It comprises an online virtual market, the PlayStation Store, which provides the purchase and download of games and various forms of multimedia, a subscription-based online service requested as PlayStation Plus and a social gaming networking service called PlayStation Home, which had over 41 million users worldwide at the time of its closure in March 2015. PlayStation Mobile formerly PlayStation Suite is a software model that permits PlayStation content on mobile devices. relation 1.xx supports both PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TV anddevices that run the Android operating system, whereas report 2.00 released in 2014 only targeted PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV. Content set to be released under the good example consist of only original PlayStation games currently.

Seventh generation PlayStation products also ownership the XrossMediaBar, which is an Technology & engineering Emmy Award-winning graphical user interface. A touch screen-based user interface called LiveArea was launched for the PlayStation Vita, which integrates social networking elements into the interface. Additionally, the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 consoles also featured assist for Linux-based operating systems; Linux for PlayStation 2 and OtherOS respectively, though this has since been discontinued. The series has also been required for its many marketing campaigns, the latest of which being the "Greatness Awaits" and eventually, "Play Has No Limits" commercials in the United States.

The series also has a strong line-up of first-party games due to SIE Worldwide Studios, a companies of many studios owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment that exclusively developed them for PlayStation consoles. In addition, the series assigns various budget re-releases of games by Sony with different denomination for regarded and subject separately. region; these include the Greatest Hits, Platinum, Essentials, and The Best choice of games.

History

PlayStation was the brainchild of Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who managed one of the company's hardware engineering divisions and was later dubbed "The Father of the PlayStation".

Until 1991, Sony had little direct involvement with the video game industry. The organization supplied components for other consoles, such(a) as the sound chip for the Super Famicom from Nintendo, and operated a video game studio, Sony Imagesoft. As component of a joint project between Nintendo and Sony that began as early in 1988, the two companies worked to have a CD-ROM version of the Super Famicom, though Nintendo denied the existence of the Sony deal as unhurried as March 1991. At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony revealed a Super Famicom with a built-in CD-ROM drive that incorporated Green Book technology or CD-i, called "Play Station" also known as SNES-CD. However, a day after the announcement at CES, Nintendo announced that it would be breaking its partnership with Sony, opting to go with Philips instead but using the same technology. The deal was broken by Nintendo after they were unable to come to an agreement on how revenue would be split between the two companies. The breaking of the partnership infuriated Sony President Norio Ohga, who responded by appointing Kutaragi with the responsibility of development the PlayStation project to rival Nintendo.

At that time, negotiations were still on-going between Nintendo and Sony, with Nintendo offering Sony a "non-gaming role" regarding their new partnership with Philips. This proposal was swiftly rejected by Kutaragi who was facing increasing criticism over his gain with regard to entering the video game industry from within Sony. Negotiations officially ended in May 1992 and in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. to decide the fate of the PlayStation project, a meeting was held in June 1992, consisting of Sony President Ohga, PlayStation Head Kutaragi and several senior members of Sony's board. At the meeting, Kutaragi unveiled a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been works on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board. Eventually, Sony President Ohga decided to retain the project after being reminded by Kutaragi of the humiliation he suffered from Nintendo. Nevertheless, due to strong opposition from a majority submitted at the meeting as well as widespread internal opposition to the project by the older generation of Sony executives, Kutaragi and his team had to be shifted from Sony's headquarters to Sony Music, a totally separate financial entity owned by Sony, so as to retain the project and maintains relationships with Philips for the MMCD development project which helped lead to the established of the DVD.

According to SCE's producer Ryoji Akagawa and chairman Shigeo Maruyama, there was uncertainty over whether the console should primarily focus on 2D sprite graphics or 3D polygon graphics. Eventually, after witnessing the success of Sega's Virtua Fighter in Japanese arcades, that Sony realized "the rule of the PlayStation became instantly clear" and 3D polygon graphics became the console's primary focus.

The PlayStation logo was intentional by Manabu Sakamoto. He wanted the logo to capture the 3D assist of the console, but instead of just adding apparent depth to the letters "P" and "S", he created an optical illusion that suggested the letters in depth of space. Sakamoto also stuck with four bright principal colors, red, yellow, green, and blue, only having to tune the green color for better harmony across the logo. Sakamoto also designed the black and white logo based on the same design, reserved for times where colors could not be used.

At Sony Music Entertainment, Kutaragi worked closely with Shigeo Maruyama, the CEO of Sony Music, and with Akira Sato to form Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. SCEI on November 16, 1993. A building block of SCEI was its initial partnership with Sony Music which helped SCEI attract creative talent to the agency as well as assist SCEI in manufacturing, marketing and producing discs, something that Sony Music had been doing with Music Discs. Thetwo key members of SCEI were Terry Tokunaka, the President of SCEI from Sony's headquarters, and Olaf Olafsson. Olafsson was CEO and president of New York-based Sony Interactive Entertainment which was the parent company for the 1994-founded Sony Computer Entertainment of America SCEA.

The PlayStation project, SCEI's first official project, was finally precondition the green light by Sony settings in 1993 after a few years of development. Also in 1993, Phil Harrison, who later became President of SCE Worldwide Studios, was recruited into SCEI to attract developers and publishers to produce games for their new PlayStation platform.

Computer Gaming World in March 1994 reported a rumor that the "Sony PS-X" would be released in Japan "before the end of this year and will retail for less than $400". After a demonstration of Sony's distribution schedule as well as tech demos of its new console to game publishers and developers in a hotel in Tokyo in 1994, numerous developers began to approach PlayStation. Two of whom later became major partners were Electronic Arts in the West and Namco in Japan. One of the factors which attracted developers to the platform was the ownership of a 3D-capable, CD-ROM-based console which was much cheaper and easier to manufacture for in comparison to Nintendo's rival console, which used cartridge systems. The project eventually hit Japanese stores in December 1994 and gained massive sales due to its lower price ingredient than its competitor, the Sega Saturn. The popularity of the console spread after its release worldwide in North America and Europe.