If in 2024, the Japanese launch of the First PlayStation was held, this September 29, 2025 corresponds to the thirty years of the arrival of the brand to Europe. She has marked the history of video games, but above all enriched innumerable new models throughout the decades, until it becomes one of the most powerful in the world of consoles.
In front of Xbox, which still seems to look for its path in this sector, and together with a Nintendo that is being reinvented outside the console of the console of the living room, with the switch, Sony has crossed the years by offering avant -garde consoles and surprising franchises.
A launch … thanks to Nintendo
The anecdote is known by the most experienced players: Nintendo allowed the PlayStation to see the day in a completely involuntary way. While Sony is just a specialist in the CD player, the Japanese company is closer to Nintendo to design a CD-ROM player for the Super Nintendo.
We know the rest. Despite the signing of an association, Nintendo will decide to plant Sony, pushing the company to design its own console, PlayStation. The manufacturer will have had a hollow nose: it is the best console sold in the world with more than 100 million copies sold.
Ironically, thirty years later, Sony will bury the ax of the war by launching its first game at Switch: Lego Horizon Adventure.
A PlayStation 2 that created riots
With its DVD player and its affordable price (680 euros, taking into account inflation, 450 euros at that time), PlayStation 2 has a real box worldwide. In the 48 -hour space, it flows to almost a million copies in Japan. In total, 160 million consoles will be sold until its official completion, twelve years later (in 2012).
Standing scenes are still difficult to imagine today. In the Elyseos fields, the PS2 midnight launch causes a riot inside the megastore Virgin. The console marked the video game long before the tsunami Waius Raz.
“J-RPG” consoles
In thirty years, the various PlayStation consoles will have had a catalog that is up to their success. Whatever the generation, each of the consoles will have experienced its share of the cult games. But during the first two generations, Sony can count on the support of Japanese publishers, particularly Square Enix.
The latter will abandon Nintendo and propose Final Fantasy VII In PlayStation. At that time, Square Enix was far from imagining that a new three -part version will finally be launched more than 25 years later. But obviously he is not alone. Japanese Role fans (J-RPG) will have their money with Dragon Quest VIII, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve, Star Ocean, Person, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Cloud, Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII, Final Fantasy XIIIeither Snape Galaxy.
Two portable consoles in the shadow of Nintendo
While Nintendo enjoys an increasingly insolent success with its portable consoles, Game Boy, Sony, will launch the development of the portable playstation, the PSP, and will launch it in 2004. Success is not so important in the DS, much more accessible, but it will still be sold for more than 80 million copies. In spite of everything, the format imposed, UMD-DISC, will never have the success expected by Sony.
For PS Vita, its second portable console, the Japanese manufacturer, such as 3DS, will suffer consumer fashion for the game in smartphones. Despite a particularly attractive technical sheet (especially with its OLED screen and its graphic capabilities significantly higher than the Nintendo portable console), this is already the beginning of the end. Released in 2012 with games in cartridge format, it is not helped by a relatively disappointing catalog with respect to the one in PlayStation 3 and 4.
It quickly neglects the official communication, and its only dematerialized version, which was a pioneer at that time, without a cartridge slot, made a failure against the sling of resellers who refused to offer it on their shelves.
This is, to date, the last Royal Sony portable console. However, the company has launched the PlayStation portal, which only serves as a screen for a PlayStation 5 that must remain on.
The failure of the beginnings of PlayStation 3
Launched at 600 euros, the PlayStation 3 has the great task of happening to PlayStation 2 and its 160 million copies sold. Problem: Its internal design processor is as promising as a complex to dominate by developers, far from the standards adopted by Xbox at that time and are close to the PC. As a result, the studies do not follow, and some games never arrive, or with great delay, or even be less beautiful.
Consumers are not wrong and the console does not know success during the first two years, pushing Sony quickly reduced the price of their console. The manufacturer is accused of taking too seriously, allowing Xbox to win, especially among third -party editors and independent studies.
If in the end, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will play a game, the episode will have permanently marked the image of PlayStation among the players. We remember that at the launch of the PS3 in France, when there was no one in the queue fnac des Champs elysées, a barge in the colors of Xbox 360, thrown a year earlier, was walked in the Seine.
A PlayStation 4 that allowed Sony to return
While Microsoft faces a deep players due to the dematerialization policy of the Xbox One games (a plan since it was abandoned), Sony plays on the price and marketing arguments to show the players the face of their manufacturer who learned from their mistakes.
In addition to a 100 euros floor price cheaper than Xbox, the PS4 affirms the possibility of being able to “lend” its games without limit … unlike Xbox, before Microsoft investment. The continuation is known: in this generation, although Japan is less promising than before, the PS4 will win the “console war” highly and will be sold for more than 117 million copies, against 58 million for the Xbox One.
PlayStation Network and PS Plus have won
If Xbox was the first to offer play online thanks to Xbox Live, Sony quickly took the measure of the potential of this functionality. Therefore, the company launches the PlayStation Network on PS2 with cooperative games such as Socom. However, it will be necessary to wait for PS3 to really take advantage of it. Today, this is the most profitable position of the brand, particularly thanks to the increasingly digital consumption of the players.
With the incorporation of PlayStation Plus, which allows you to subscribe to enjoy the game online while you receive free games every month, but also the PlayStation now, which offers games of the old consoles, is the complete box. More than 44 million subscribers are identified, despite regular price increases.
A manufacturer that has (big) editor
If the PS2 has experienced mainly success thanks to its important catalog of third -party publishers games, over the years, Sony has been affirmed as developer in its own right. Today has particularly strong licenses such as Horizon, unknown, God of war Not forgetting The last of us.
Some have adapted to cinema and television, or on the way, again with several successes, and even when it is not a house license, such as SpiderEach exclusivity of PlayStation is expected to be firmly. A role that Nintendo and Xbox had so far.
Killzone, Halo’s “murderer” forgotten
When Killzone liberated in PlayStation 2 in 2004, he immediately presented himself as Sony’s response to the saga Halowhose success is no longer to be tested. Games Games is in the maneuver (they will sign the saga a few years later Horizon) and wants to impose his style both in terms of play and in the cinematographic form of telling a story.
Only here, the license will experience a serious hole after the debacle Killzone 2. During his announcement up the launch of the PS3, a trailer promised as “real game” is in fact only a kinematics in synthetic images. After long years of additional development, the game ends up, but does not know the success of its first two Opus and is far from being as beautiful as the initial promise. The latest, Killzone ShadowfallThat will be launched in the launch of the PS4, will be the tomb of the saga.
TO THE ALL SERVICE … without success
The history of PlayStation is also marked by failures. One of the most recent is linked to Sony’s strategy, which, in recent years, is to launch all “service games” projects (updated for several years, with paid or free content).
With the exception of Destinationwhose Bungie study has been bought in the meantime about one billion dollars, the rest is still withdrawn. Only 2 created the surprise, while a few months later, the industrial disaster represented by ConcordClosed twelve days after its launch, due to lack of players, he showed enthusiasm. The project Fairgame $A time used by Jade Raymond has always given any life signal.
Like the PC versions launched with more than a relative success, Sony still seems far from having found the appropriate formula to diversify its activities and its sources of income.
Source: BFM TV
