If you are a gaming aficionado, it is impossible not to have heard of PlayStation (even if you were not born in the early 90s when it first appeared). Yes, 20 years after the first console hit the gaming market, PlayStation 4 remains the top-selling and most popular device among gamers.
Launched on Dec. 3, 1994, the first PlayStation console is past its teenage years and is celebrating its 20th Anniversary in Las Vegas.
PlayStation creator Shuhei Yoshida will be present in Las Vegas. In the PlayStation blog, Yoshida wrote: "20 years is a long time! In 1994, many outsiders thought that Sony was slightly crazy to launch the original PlayStation into an incredibly competitive gaming market. Who could blame them? Sony was (and is!) famous for engineering great electronics, audio equipment, and many other consumer devices. But game consoles?!"
Yoshida still oversees the company's global game studios and as part of the celebration, Sony will commemorate the anniversary by releasing a limited edition of PS4, with only 12,300 mass-produced.
In an exclusive interview with PC World, Yoshida tells his experience through the years with Sony and how he saw the company evolve during the last two decades.
"I still remember when we were working on PSOne before the launch. We were a total newcomer in the game industry and I was one of the small groups who visited Japanese publishers and the major companies at that time," Yoshida told PC World.
Yoshida was all out in sharing his experiences when Sony and PlayStation were still new in the gaming market. He said that big players in the industry did not give their product a big nod at first because the market at that time was entirely different.
The Sony executive said that the majority of game developers were more focused on the 2D market with the exception of Namco that was experimenting in 3D graphics and games.
However, what drove Yoshida and his team to do better with their product was the openness of other industry players at the time and their being straightforward about the intensity of competition.
At one point, Yoshida said the management of a gaming company once told him that it might consider developing games for Sony PlayStation if it manages to sell a million units. The thought challenged Yoshida and his team to be more creative and competitive.
Yoshida and his team hired the best developers they could find, the way other market players did. However, what separates Sony from the rest is their exposure to the film industry.
He said the key element for consoles to be successful remains unchanged: ease of use. But Sony's exposure to film creation gave the company an edge because they took advantage of the movie industry's 3D technology.
They hired a group of actors who would rehearse for hours before their game programmers would start on motion capture. Over time, Yoshida said the industry caught up with a more real-life, motion capture technology that has not stopped improving.
