Now few doubt that the most successful company in the world, as far as desktop video game consoles are concerned, has a single name: Sony. Although Nintendo continues to hold its own and has a harder time keeping up depending on the success it has with each new generation, in the PlayStation part its hegemony is indisputable since in 1995 it launched in a large part of the world markets its first machine. But not everything was a bed of roses.
Sony and video games, a blow to start
You have to remember that Sony is one of the most important technology companies of the XNUMXth century., glory of the times of Made in Japan which gave birth to a good part of the inventions and innovations related to technology: from simple calculators, to televisions, stereos and, of course, from the 80s, computers. It was then that a standard promoted by the company emerged, supported by dozens of companies with their own models such as MSX.
Those 8-bit microcomputers (at first) They were present in many markets, Japan being one of its fundamental pillars. But unlike what happened there, in the rest of the world MSX was a highly valued system by users, but when it came time to translate that quality into sales... it cost more. Europe and the US preferred other alternatives such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 or Amstrad CPC, and that dream from Asia remained a mere side note.
That first experience marked the Japanese, who They always thought very much about putting their heads back into a sector related to video games, precisely to avoid another upset that consumed too many millions of yen. Even so, they returned to the charge offering to develop a CD drive for the Super Nintendo that would be called... PlayStation... although it was finally rejected and who knows if it was the turning point that made them see that the only way left was to develop a new system that they would bring themselves and on their behalf to the stores.
Still, the specter of the failure of MSX always hovered over the first years of PlayStation's existence until its definitive consecration just a couple of years after reaching the stores. Proof of this is that the first operations in Spain were not carried out by a company called PlayStation, or Sony Computer Entertainment, but by Columbia Pictures, which was the film and home video distributor at the time. Because? Well, if things went wrong and they had to retract the sails, it was always easier to do it by closing a new area of ​​an already consolidated company, than having to put an end to a mastodon created specifically for video games.
Luckily for the Japanese, sales smiled at them and it soon became clear that In front of the Nintendo-SEGA pairing, not only was Sony, but only they were going to remain like true market bosses.
All PlayStation consoles
Below we leave you, one by one, all the machines that have been reaching stores under the PlayStation brand. There are not many, but all have marked history.
PlayStation (1995)
It was the starting point for the PlayStation family, a console that already demonstrated from its first releases that it was playing in another division, with a technical and graphic power well above its competition, then SegaSaturn, so in a very short time it was practically alone in the market and without any opposition. His first games remain in memory, such as Ridge Racer, Tekken, To Shinden, Jumping Flash, Toon GP Engine, Destruction derby, Wipeout, etc.
The growth of the brand allowed Sony to take some exclusives that until then were the private preserve of Nintendo, As the final Fantasy or Konami games like the Metal Gear Solid to Pro Evolution Soccer. Based on these small arrivals, the PlayStation ecosystem differentiated itself and convinced old gamers who had been out of the market for years to quickly return to it, hand in hand with the only brand that innovated and also offered unique products.
What's more, at the end of the 90s, the term "la play" became so popular that it was used to refer, not so much to a PlasyStation console, but to the very segment of video game consoles, whether from SEGA, Microsoft, Atari or SNK. That was the moment when Sony launched a revised model of the legendary console: PS One, with built-in screen (official) and everything. Do you remember her?
Cumulative total sales: 102,49 million
Pocket Station (1999)
©Lifeisagame
Some people consider this PocketStation as one more member of the PlayStation family and it really is, but we don't know if to the point of referring to it as a separate console from the Japanese. In those 90s the Bandai Tamagotchi were a real fever and Sony did not hesitate to launch a hybrid that mixed that idea and that, on top of that, allowed us to connect it to the PSX console through the Memory Card port to store games and things like that.
In other words, it was an accessory that expanded the game beyond the television screen, but always in a very schematic and limited LCD game-style way. Still, we cannot deny that it was a hardware release from the japanese in which many saw a clear copy of the VMUs that SEGA released along with its sensational Dreamcast.
PS2 (2000)
And we arrive at the year 2000. The console market lives between the small failure of Nintendo 64 and the clear withdrawal of the Japanese that will cause the launch of the GameCube in 2001; SEGA's attempt to return to what it was with the 16-bit generation thanks to the Dreamcast; and the drums of war a new opponent, formidable and lined with money, as was Microsoft with his hypothetical Xbox.
in the middle of that tidal wave, the only clear and reliable thing is that PlayStation was going to have a second generation that hit the market in the year 2000, amid complaints from programmers who claimed that developing for the new machine was like "chewing stones". It doesn't matter what they consider because quickly PlayStation 2 began to sell and destroy, leaving all his competition at a great distance.
This new PS2 was the first to incorporate the DVD format into games, at the same time that it took advantage of the explosion of that format as the preferred one to watch movies and series at home. So the move came out perfect for Sony, owner as it was of an important Hollywood production company whose releases later sold millions to everyone who owned one of its new consoles.
Halfway through the generation, it released a smaller, lighter, and thinner model, colloquially known as the PS2. Slim, that helped sell even more and he inaugurated that habit of putting up improved models for sale every few years, and cheaper to manufacture.
The success of PS2 was the one that really established Sony as the reference brand in the world of video games and it gave it an advantage and prestige that to this day it continues to take advantage of with each new launch it carries out, including exclusive sagas that clearly choose PlayStation for users. So a lot of what the Japanese have achieved right now must be found in those early years of the XNUMXst century.
Cumulative total sales: 158,70 million
PSP (2004)
What to say about Sony's first portable console, which had been rumored to exist practically since the late 90s. But it was in 2004 when the PSP hit the market, in December, and it did so by displaying the technology of a console that offered a graphic spectacle that was located between PS2 and PS3. It started with very strong sales boosted by extraordinary launches, such as a Ridge racer new or adaptations of the Metal Gear amazing, how were the editions Acid.
Rockstar would come later with two GTA of championship, as they were Liberty City Stories y Vice city stories, in addition to a commitment to cinema in UMD format that allowed many to do something unthinkable at the time: watch near-DVD quality movies on the go, in addition to being able to listen to music, read comics or view photos previously saved on the console.
Everything was going perfectly until piracy got involved, which systematically reduced the launches of companies that saw how their investments never recovered. Little by little, the splendor of PSP was waning and fading. Even so, he had time to accumulate an extraordinary catalog of games that today are highly valued by collectors.
Cumulative total sales: 80,79 million
PS3 (2006)
Xbox had launched its first console too late (compared to PS2) in 2001, so in the next generation it decided to get ahead of Sony, which took another year to launch its response to Xbox 360. PS3 is, like everything that happened in that generation , which It represents the first great technological leap of the brand, with hardware that many thought was too advanced for the time. What's more, it was because of those components used by Sony that PlayStation 3 hit the stores with a price of almost 600 euros that almost doomed the brand to a miserable failure.
Even so, although it lost the battle against Xbox 360 in markets such as the US or the UK, Spain remained true to its tradition sonier and PS3 was the best seller, boasting of power with some of the exclusive franchises that we still enjoy today. It is the case of Uncharted, who were born with it, or The Last of Us, in addition to other games that with the graphic power of this generation gave a huge leap in quality, such as God of War III, etc.
As in the case of PS2, underwent design revisions although in this case there were two: a first Slim, and another completely redone with a Blu-ray opening system (just above on the right) that looked like one of those old granny bread boxes.
Cumulative total sales: 87,40 million
PS Vita (2011)
In 2011 smartphones are already the most popular mobile phone models. Apple and Android digital stores offer hundreds of games (many of them free) and touchscreens are so natural that no one imagines a portable device without one. With that panorama, Sony tried to compete against those giants and ventured to repeat the success of PSP with a new console, with a graphic power a tad higher than that of PS3 and with a hardware and finish typical of the Japanese brand.
It had two touch panels (one behind and one on the screen), a new format for games through cards, one slot for extra storage to download digital games and a whole host of apps focused on the most social aspects to unite players from all over the world.
In addition, to make it more in tune with the tastes of the time, Wifi-only versions and also with 3G were marketed, to take multiplayer down the street... but soon the Japanese will discover that all their effort will come to nothing, despite the launch of PS4 and its options for remote play or as an extended screen: the support of the third parties was nil, there are hardly any releases that can boost sales (a final Fantasy, Metal Gear, etc.) and even Sony itself did not make great efforts to goalkeeper one of its exclusives with more pull.
Console hardware revisions didn't help sales either, including the PlayStation TV desktop version, so it fell far, far short of what was achieved by PSP. Even so, we cannot say that PS Vita was a bad idea because looking back, the catalog that he finally managed to achieve is one of those that lovers of niche franchises like, and proof of this is the collectors market born out of your surroundings.
Cumulative total sales: 15,82 million
PS4 (2013)
Seven years after the launch of the PS3 and the (almost) scare the Japanese got, PS4 arrives with very clear ideas: a hardware according to the price that will have in stores and a clear goodbye to those flirtations that they had on PS3 with occurrences such as games with movement control (PS Move) or 3D. The Japanese once again promise us video games, pure and hard without strange additions that only annoy.
The result is that it quickly becomes the best-selling console of that generation, after the mistakes that Microsoft made with Xbox One, which arrived in stores with a Kinect camera that everyone used as a decoration. LThe Japanese knew how to excite those disenchanted with PS3 again with more and better exclusive games in a strategy that would seem very aggressive, but which was the key to the enormous sales of that generation.
In 2016 would come the only time when Sony decided to offer something different with PS VR: virtual reality lands on consoles with a very well designed device and thought, that it is optional and that it does not affect the standard releases for PS4. Hence the key to whether or not its success is independent of the console itself.
PS4 also had its version Slim in that same year 2016, while for the first time the Japanese decided to create a more powerful PS4.5 to enjoy games with higher graphic quality and frame rate per second. Your name? PS4 Pro, which allowed many gamers to really start taking advantage of their hitherto wasted 4K TVs.
To this day it is the second best-selling Sony console of all time.
Cumulative total sales: 116,95 million
PS5 (2020)
And we come to the last generation of PlayStation that appeared and we can say little about it, because its history is still being written and it looks like it will last, because the lack of units to sell is so large that even today it is impossible to buy it in a store. So let's hope it stretches beyond 2027 and reaches 2030 even. Although business is business.
As you can imagine, we are waiting to have a new PS VR 2 heirs to the PS4 model, it is unknown if we will have a version Slim (actually we have no doubt that there will be one) and even a somewhat more powerful Pro model. But all of that is part of what we will continue to tell you about here over the next few years, as we continue to update each line of this article with whatever the future holds.
Cumulative total sales: 20,84 million (July 2022)