P L AY S TAT ION

With a tear in our eye we look back on where it all began

“MAINSTREAM MEDIA, FASHION, MUSIC AND FILM MAGAZINES DEVOTED COLUMN INCHES TO IT.”

As we put it in 1995, it was “the biggest hardware launch of the decade.” Having looked on as Japan and the US got to try PlayStation ahead of us here in the UK, we confidently said this was “Sony’s biggest launch since the Walkman, [and] puts PlayStation in prime position to be the nextgeneration machine.”

It wasn’t easy for Sony – by the end of 1994 Sega Saturn had outsold PlayStation by 200,000 units – but with US and European launches planned for 1995 Sony began to market its console to a new, older, cooler customer. At the first E3 in LA on 11 May 1995, Olaf Olafsson, the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America, revealed PlayStation would cost $299, undercutting Saturn by $100. Sony then revealed its killer lineup of Ridge Racer, Tekken, and WipEout. Forgoing cartridges for CDs, PlayStation meant more out of the box; mainstream media, fashion, music, and film magazines devoted column inches to the console. It was the kind of cultural shift that Sony continues to play on today.

Television ads followed, throwing out old conventions.

Mark Tiedemann, who’d directed music videos for Prince, created the first ad, a satire called SAPS (Society Against PlayStation). He told OPM at the time: “The whole concept of the anti-sell is something that is seen in the US. This is dead on… I think kids are gonna love it, and I think it’s speaking to them as intelligent human beings, instead of telling them what to buy because it’s the coolest cool.”

PlayStation released in Europe on 29 September 1995. By Christmas it had outsold Saturn three-to-one. By the end of its first year Sony had 25% of the US games market. This was some achievement when you consider the launch lineup included Street Fighter: The Movie. But it also had Rayman, which came from nowhere to become the console’s best-selling game. You can’t argue with the numbers. Sony’s first PlayStation would sell over 100 million units; the first games console to achieve these sales.