PlayStation

The PlayStation exists because of a deal that collapsed. In 1988 a Sony engineer named Ken Kutaragi proposed a CD-ROM drive for Nintendo's Super NES — a Sony-built console that would play Super NES cartridges alongside a new disc format called the Super Disc. At the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, Sony unveiled it as the "Play Station." The next day Nintendo announced from the same show that it was partnering with Philips instead, a reversal now widely described as one of the great betrayals in the industry's history. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had balked at terms that would have let Sony control the Super Disc format and its licensing. Sony cut ties in May 1992, and Kutaragi — later known as the Father of the PlayStation — persuaded Sony to build a console of its own instead.

It launched in Japan on 3 December 1994 and reached North America on 9 September 1995 at US$299. The price itself became the famous part: at E3 that year, after Sega revealed the Saturn at $399, Sony's Steve Race walked on stage, said "Two ninety-nine," and walked off. That was the entire presentation. Sony had 17 games ready at the American launch to Sega's six, and over 100,000 pre-orders waiting.

What people actually remember is the furniture of the thing. The console shipped with no game in the box. Saves lived on a 128 KB memory card you shared between friends and guarded like a wallet. And the controller everyone pictures — two thumbsticks, a motor buzzing in each grip — wasn't there at the start: the launch pad had a D-pad and buttons and nothing else. Analog sticks arrived with the Dual Analog Controller in April 1997, and the DualShock followed that November, at which point it quietly became the shape every controller has copied since.

The machine outlived its own generation. A smaller redesign, the PS one, arrived in July 2000 stripped of the rear expansion ports, and outsold every other console — including Sony's own new PlayStation 2 — through the end of that year. On 19 May 2004 Sony announced that PlayStation and PS one hardware had together passed 100 million units shipped as of the day before, which it called a first in the history of game consoles, reached nine and a half years after launch. Sony puts combined lifetime shipments at more than 102.4 million. Sony finally discontinued the line on 23 March 2006, more than eleven years after that first Japanese release.