When Sony launched the PlayStation in 1994, no one but one predicted that it would literally shake the ground, a redistribution of cards in the gaming industry.
That person is the main protagonist of our story, Ken Kutaragi, today known as the ‘father of PlayStation’. Ken is a name that has accomplished great things with his stubbornness and ambition. In the 1980s, he believed that Sony could also do great things in the newly established game console world.
Ken, who wanted Sony to produce a console too, had a dream that was almost impossible at the time.
He wanted to make a console that could play 3D games. He knew very well that he had to work with Nintendo, one of the judges of the game world in those days.
He somehow contacted Nintendo and did what even his bosses told him not to do. While working at Sony, he secretly sold a sound processor to Nintendo. Even though Sony management was angry about this situation, then CEO Norio Ogha must have noticed the light in Ken and allowed the things he wanted to do.
Ken was a good boy, but he had one bad flaw. He trusted Nintendo too much.
With time, things got bigger and Ken went to Nintendo with a new offer. At that time, games on consoles worked with floppy disks or cassettes. Ken changed that and came up with the idea of producing a newly emerging console that works with CDs with larger storage.
The idea was well received and Nintendo accepted the offer. Studies were done, prototype was prepared. So everything was ok. The console was even called ‘Nintendo PlayStation’. By 1991, the console would be introduced at the CES Fair.
However, this deal, which was very important for Sony, was terminated by Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi.
And one day after Sony made a statement saying, ‘Let the whole world hear, we are producing consoles with Nintendo’. The biggest reason for this situation, which came as a great shock to Sony, was that Sony had full control over the consoles.
There was another dimension to this stake thrown by Nintendo. At the CES Fair, the company said, “We have terminated our contract with Sony. We will work with Philips, another CD maker, his arch-enemy,” he said.
All these things caused Sony to hesitate about producing consoles.
But Ken Kutaragi was very confident in his project and still believed that the company could make consoles that offered 3D images. The company had come a long way and had a long way to go.
Ken convinced the company officials with his speech and eventually got the game console project to continue.
Sony was working on it. But Nintendo has put another stone in the way.
The company had produced the console called ‘PlayStation’. However, Sony was sued over both the naming rights and Nintendo’s involvement in the project. As a result of the lawsuits, Sony and Nintendo reached an agreement in 1992.
According to this agreement, Nintendo SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) could be used on PlayStations, but the license rights would be entirely owned by Nintendo. On top of that, Sony’s sound chips (we’re talking about what Ken sells) would be used in other consoles produced by Nintendo. After all this fanfare, it is known that Sony only produced about 200 PlayStations.
By 1993, after these problems, Ken took over the project and started to work with a new team.
The console, which emerged after great work, has nothing to do with ‘PlayStation’, which Nintendo stormed. It was even named ‘PlayStation’. It neither had SNES support nor was it similar to consoles produced until that day. It was quite different, and on top of that, it played games in 3D.
On December 3, 1994, PlayStation met users and all 100,000 PlayStations produced for the launch were sold in one day. Introduced in the USA in 1995, the console broke a record in this field with the number of sales exceeding 7 million worldwide in the same year.
As the saying goes, ‘every betrayal begins with love’. If Nintendo hadn’t done these things to Sony in time; If Ken Kutaragi had not wanted to take his revenge, perhaps PlayStation would not have been one of the best consoles in the world today.
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