The Story of Playstation (2023) Movie Script
1
(film rolling) (subdue music)
[Jason] Loss, terror, sorrow.
In the wake of World
War II, Japan was broken.
The atomic bombs were dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
signifying a conclusion
to the conflict.
[Narrator] Wooden structures
were completely collapsed by the blast.
This was Hiroshima Castle.
Its framework was demolished
by the force of the blast,
but fires of secondary
origin did not occur.
That bomb has more power
than 20,000 tons of TNT.
It is an atomic bomb.
It is a harnessing of the
basic power of the universe.
(film rolling)
[Jason] There were two options.
The first was to give up,
to fall behind.
The second
was to rebuild.
(piano music)
(robust music)
(birds chirping)
(robust music)
(robust music continues)
(robust music continues)
(lively music)
The Sony Walkman was a huge hit,
selling over 400 million units worldwide
and solidifying Sony
as a new cultural icon.
Masaru Ibuka simply wanted to be able
to privately listen to
music on long flights.
However, nobody expected how successful
or timeless the product would become.
(transition music)
Many people started to use
this Walkman recording, - Mm-hmm.
which is even for the conference.
- Yes, that's right.
- Yeah.
[Acquaintance] Yes,
it's ideal. (Faintly speaks)
We started from very, very small company,
and we found unless we produce,
we make different product, unique product
without technology,
we thought we cannot
compete existing giant.
That's why we have been trying to be unique
and different from others.
Because in this country,
there are many, many unique creative idea,
but unfortunately,
it do not become a real
good industry or business.
PlayStation, a part of Sony,
and before they started making
video games and consoles,
they were actually much more famous
for other pieces of tech,
most notably the Walkman
and then the CD Walkman,
which were universally
taken up around the world
as a way to play a music on the move.
This was a phenomenally
successful product.
Everyone had one. I had one.
(energetic music)
[Jason] During this time,
arcades and video games were on the rise,
with companies such as Nintendo and Atari
leading the race in the gaming market.
Though it could be profitable,
the gaming market was
also highly oversaturated,
and Sony chose to
avoid the race altogether,
focusing on their hardware.
Amidst the 1980s recession,
Sony would proceed to develop the CDP-101,
the world's first compact CD player.
The release spurred their competitors
to realize their own
CD players a year later,
but Sony was already
focused on their next projects.
From the '60s,
Sony ensured the
standardization of their designs.
They formed the design office
where developers and chairman
would meet to plan new innovations.
This process continues to the present day
in this very location, now
named the Creative Center.
With competition rising, Sony
finally decided to branch out.
Ken Kutaragi worked for
Sony. He was a brilliant engineer.
He was also a maverick and a hothead.
He had a reputation for
ratting out his superiors.
The PlayStation was really his idea.
He had the idea back in 1984,
after seeing this computer
graphics workstation.
It cost tens, maybe hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
It had really advanced 3D graphics,
and he thought one day, that
technology will be cheap enough
to do a home games
console with 3D graphics.
And basically, he made it happen.
[Jason] Ken Kutaragi
would be a figurehead
of the gaming developmental branch.
From a young age, he was
considered a tinkerer of sorts,
destined from childhood
to have a deep interest
in the anatomy of technology and mechanics.
Delving into the world
of gaming technology,
Ken would propose Sony's
first collaborator be Nintendo,
but not everything went according to plan.
So, in the 1980s around about,
Sony was mainly an audiovisual company.
It hadn't really delved all
that much into video games.
The sound chip was
one of the things that made
the Super Nintendo Entertainment
System so successful.
The sound was incredible
for a video game console at that time.
And so, Nintendo were really keen
to carry on with that success.
They wanted Sony to
develop a CD-ROM peripheral
for the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System.
They wanted Ken Kutaragi to do it.
So, he befriends Nintendo.
He creates a chip
to do the sound for the
Super Nintendo console.
And then, he strikes a deal
with Nintendo to create the PlayStation.
And this is not the PlayStation we know.
This PlayStation was going to be a hybrid
of the Super Nintendo.
You could plug in the cartridges,
but it would also run CD-ROM
games created by Sony.
So, in 1991, Sony very proudly announced
that they were working with Nintendo
to develop this CD-ROM peripheral.
But Nintendo was worried that Sony
were gonna take over
their video game console.
And so, Nintendo very
publicly betrayed them.
(crowd chattering)
They announced that they
were partnering with Phillips,
one of Sony's main rivals,
to deliver this peripheral.
And this was just a
knife in the back to Sony.
Sony had no idea this was coming,
because Nintendo hadn't been
returning their calls all week.
Sony had already announced
that they were partnering with Nintendo,
so that made them look quite foolish.
Sony was really upset at this betrayal.
Nintendo's problem
with Sony was that Sony
was starting to expand into
movies and to TV and to music.
So, Nintendo was starting
to worry that Sony's ambitions
weren't just about supplying
hardware to Nintendo.
It was actually planning to
launch its own games console.
Now, at the time, Sony wasn't planning to,
but Ken Kutaragi wanted it to.
So, it was Ken Kutaragi's plan.
It wasn't Sony's plan at the time.
Sony saw a Nintendo as
this toy company, really.
So, the idea that this small toy company
would betray it so publicly
and team up with a foreign rival,
Phillips, really angered Sony.
It's not how business (heart beating)
is done in Japan.
And that helped Ken to persuade them
to develop their own video game console
as a kind of revenge on Nintendo.
(tense music)
[Jason] Nintendo's
betrayal was a shock to Ken
and the heads at PlayStation.
Nintendo opting for a different
manufacturer enraged Sony.
And in 1994, the Sony
PlayStation was released.
Woo
From the start, the PlayStation
would be seen as a powerhouse,
selling over 102 million units worldwide,
massively outselling the Super Nintendo,
and putting Sony into
running for the highest-grossing
manufacturer from a single release.
Sony PlayStation first came out in 1994.
(music drowns out Tristan)
(transition music)
You are approaching Saturn.
You're only seconds away.
I have arranged for you to meet my
companion.
In May, 1995,
at the first Electronic
Entertainment Expo, E3,
there was a huge amount of
buzz around the Sony PlayStation.
The Sony PlayStation was due
to be released in the North
American market that year.
Sega had its big kind
of press conference,
and it decides it's gonna trip up Sony
by announcing the Saturn is gonna cost $399
and is launching today
in selected retailers.
Now, this seemed like a great move.
That time, Sega thought,
right, we've really got Sony now.
Everyone was blown away by this,
but it was a gambit
that massively backfired.
Sony's head of development, Steve Race,
came on stage in response to
the announcement from Sega
and just said three words,
"299", mic drop.
$100 cheaper than the Sega's Saturn.
I'm going to ask Sony
Computer Entertainment
president of America,
Steve Race, (attendee coughs)
to join me for a brief presentation.
(attendees clapping)
(attendees cheering and clapping)
That, and along with the fact
that Sega had supply problems,
because they'd released
their console early,
helped to doom the Sega Saturn
to a mediocre commercial performance,
and basically ended Sega's ascendancy.
(upbeat music)
The first PlayStation console,
the PlayStation 1 came into a market
that was starting to really
boom in home gaming.
At the time,
the Nintendo consoles
were really leading the way.
There was the NES and the
SNES that had been brought out,
and also Sega's offerings,
the Master System, and so on.
PlayStation was a very different console
from everything that Nintendo had produced.
Nintendo was, very, very family-friendly,
very bright, very colorful,
very sprite-oriented graphics.
PlayStation, from the very beginning,
was prioritizing 3D polygon graphics.
So, it was more photorealistic at the time.
It was more 3D.
And it was deliberately going after,
very aggressively, a youth-focused market.
So, young adults, teenagers.
PlayStation really wanted
to corner the market for cool gaming.
Their idea was that as opposed
to Nintendo's more
family-focused games market,
they really wanted to get the teenagers,
and also the kids
who thought they were
a little bit cool as well.
PlayStation's advertising
was very different to your
typical video game ads.
So, it's very first ad in Japan
was this crying-looking office
with all these people at their desk,
banging the desk, demanding
they have a PlayStation.
In US, they have things
like "Crash Bandicoot".
An actor dressed as "Crash Bandicoot",
going to Nintendo's offices
in Seattle with megaphone
and calling a Mario to come out
and let's have a fight in your parking lot.
And over in the UK, they
were associating PlayStation
with night clubbing and the
rave drug scene at the time.
So, it was very edgy marketing campaigns
that were very adult
and not this kitty toy vibe that
(transition music)
(music drowns out Tristan)
Let me tell you what bugs
me about human endeavor.
I've never been the human in question.
Have you?
Mankind went to the moon.
I don't even know where Grimsby is.
Forget progress by proxy.
Land on your own moon.
It's no longer about what they can achieve
out there on your behalf,
but what we can experience
up here in our own time.
It's called mental wealth.
And then, also, whereas Nintendo
is very first party-focused.
So, Nintendo makes Nintendo's games.
PlayStation came right out the gate.
They wanted to snuffle
up all third party developers
as many as possible,
and make their platform
as easy to develop for,
for all of those companies as possible.
So, that just meant that
there was just a huge,
broad gamut of games
that were being released on PlayStation.
And prior to PlayStation launching,
it was a one company industry.
And who doesn't love a bit of competition?
The more companies there
are, the better it is for gamers.
PlayStation really prided itself
on being technically forward.
The graphics were something
completely sets apart
from the Nintendo consoles at the time.
It looked new and it looked exciting.
When you look back on
it, it looked quite blocky.
But at the time,
we'd not seen anything like
that in the home console world.
They had a famous demo,
which was the T-Rex demo,
which involved a T-Rex
basically roaring at the camera.
And that was a technical display
of what you could do on that console.
And that was really exciting at the time.
The Sony PlayStation
was high performance,
low cost, simple to use,
and they used really clever advertising
to get people to buy into it.
(upbeat music)
So, it suddenly seemed
like games have arrived for adults,
and that was what Sony and
PlayStation thought to make.
Nintendo had these very tight, restrictive,
family-friendly policies about
what games could be linked.
Sony didn't care that much.
So, you've got things like "Resident Evil"
and other horror games.
The Nintendo would run a marathon.
So, it really changed the landscape
and what people thought
could count as a video game.
It became acceptable
to being your early 20s
playing video games.
Whereas before then,
it's something we should
grow out of by that point.
Fiction is quite difficult
sometimes in video games,
because, all right, say
you're playing a game
in which you fly internet
spaceships around a galaxy.
Spaceships aren't real.
The galaxy isn't real.
The people you're playing with though
and the friendships that you make there,
those are as real as anything.
And one of the most exciting things
about how the new consoles use the internet
is the possibility for
all of that to expand
and to have these huge
worlds in your living room.
When the PlayStation came out,
one of the things that really set it apart
is it had some amazing titles
from really early on in its launch.
I remember personally as a kid,
I loved to play "Crash Bandicoot".
That was a huge thing
for me. I loved that game.
And then, leading on from that,
we also had "Crash Team Racing",
which was a racing game
based with the "Crash
Bandicoot" characters.
But I also loved to play "Tomb Raider",
even though I wasn't very good at it.
And that has been one of the
most iconic PlayStation titles,
and I think was actually
a bit of a console
seller for a lot of people.
As well as that, there
were the racing games.
"Gran Turismo" was a huge deal,
and that was only
available on the PlayStation.
And people loved that,
because it took a more realistic,
modern approach to racing games.
To be perfectly honest,
I'm no good at racing games,
so I was never the best
person playing them,
but they were super popular,
and my friends really loved them.
I would say like Mario
was gaming's first mascot.
Lara Croft was gaming's first icon.
The fact that a video game character
was gracing the cover of magazines,
was selling energy drinks,
was being lusted after by a lot of people.
It was just breaking new ground,
and it just meant that games
were entering a new level of cool.
PlayStation was the '90s.
(bright music)
So, "Final Fantasy VII" was
a huge deal when it launched.
It popularized the role playing game
in the West, hands down.
It was the first "Final Fantasy"
to launch on a PlayStation console.
Prior to that, they were all on Nintendo.
It really made the PlayStation
saying it utilized all the technology
that the PlayStation had to offer.
There were those 3D polygon graphics,
making gorgeous cinematic cut scenes.
FMVs, I think they were called at the time,
full-motion videos.
I think the reason that "Final Fantasy VII"
was so successful
and why it really meant a
lot to people, myself included,
was that it showed how games
could do storytelling differently.
It showed how well games could tell stories
in a way that only games could.
"Final Fantasy" story is just,
it's an epic on a scale that
few games still have to match.
That's why we're remaking it nowadays.
And still, people are
playing and replaying it.
There's remix and
remasters and everything else.
It just captured people's imaginations.
It was a great story, it
had great characters,
and it looked absolutely
gorgeous, it still does.
[Jason] Excited to see the next release,
millions of people would
await the PlayStation 2.
Outside of shops,
customers filled the streets
in order to grab the new console.
From the 7th of September,
all could go into the shops
from the 7th of September
and place an order in advance
to book their place in
the queue, if you will.
Now, because we're only
getting a limited quantity,
we're going to have to
stop that whole process,
in fact, on the Friday,
the 17th of November.
[Jason] With the use of innovative
and edgy marketing,
alongside the promise for
even more powerful gameplay,
the PlayStation 2 would
release with a bang.
It might resemble an executive briefcase
or at a push, the latest
Breville sandwich toaster.
But made no mistake,
this Sony PlayStation 2
is the most sought-after
electronic consumer item of the year,
and guaranteed to cause more tears
on Christmas Day than Bambi.
(robust music)
[Jason] To this day,
the PlayStation 2 remains the
world's highest sold console,
clocking in at over 155 million units sold.
(robust music)
The PlayStation 1
had been wildly popular,
but at that point,
it was Sony's only foray
really into the gaming world,
and they really wanted to
prove they could do it again
and capture that audience again.
So, when the PlayStation 2 came out,
that was really important for them
to really catalyze on
what they'd done already.
And the good thing was the PlayStation 2
was readvanced graphically,
but also had a killer lineup of games.
The anticipation for
PlayStation 2 was enormous.
And so, it just sold like lightning.
No other game console
managed to catch up at all.
Nintendo and Microsoft,
by the time they got their machines out,
PlayStation's lead was sky high.
It is still the biggest selling
home games console to date.
[Reporter 1] And had their initial quota
halved to 500,000 machines,
while British shoppers
will get just 165,000 before Christmas.
So, all hail, PlayStation 2.
It plays the latest video games,
as well as DVD films and compact discs.
The big reason for the
PlayStation 2's success
was that it was also a DVD player.
DVDs were just taking off,
and suddenly, you could have games console
and a DVD player for the same price,
or sometimes less than
a DVD player on its own.
So, for many people,
it was the way DVDs became a big thing,
and that really helped drive sales.
At the same time, Microsoft and Nintendo
didn't release their
competing consoles for a year.
So, PlayStation had a very long headstart,
and it had all the great games.
It had "Tomb Raider"
and Microsoft Nintendo didn't have them,
so they got left behind.
Shoppers at this London store
are in such a virtual world
of their own that they
just don't seem to care.
Just before midnight,
they'll be picking up the
first new models available.
If you didn't pre-order
one of these machines
back in September,
then don't bother turning up tonight,
because they've all sold out,
and there won't be any PlayStation 2s
freely available on the
shelves until next year.
This is clearly a very big
money-spinner for Sony,
and it couldn't have
happened at a better time.
PlayStation games were often allowed
to be a little bit edgier
and have a little bit more adult content,
and also have a little bit more violence,
which could go either way.
But meant that they were
able to really expand on things
like the shooter genres and
more adult-themed games
that were super popular
and really help to sell their consoles.
(car passing)
So, "Silent Hill" was
psychological horror game.
You were sent into this deserted,
mysterious town that was quite foggy
with all these weird,
twisted monsters in it.
And it was basically supposed
to be a reflection of your
main characters' own psyche.
So, its this really creepy horror,
instead of this B-movie, zombie horror,
the "Resident Evil" offered.
[Jason] Now in the 20th century,
gaming consoles were improving by the year.
After the PlayStation 2,
came Sony's biggest
competitor entry into the market.
Microsoft had released the Xbox.
Understanding their demographic,
Sony chose to become
experimental with their marketing,
opting for strange adverts
that subverted expectations
for a gaming manufacturer.
Whilst people were used
to the somewhat childlike
aesthetic of Nintendo,
Sony chose to adopt a mature theme,
incorporating directors
such as David Lynch into their adverts,
and purposefully making themselves
out to be the rebel the
kids secretly wanted to be.
Welcome to "The Third Place".
[Presenter] "PlayStation
2: The Third Place".
[Jason] 2004 saw the release
of the massively successful Nintendo DS,
a repercussion of
Nintendo's continuous efforts
to branch into the handheld market,
to great degrees of success.
From the Game Boy to the DS,
Sony wanted to try their
own hand at the market.
Once again, taking on Nintendo
with the development
of the PlayStation Portable in March, 2005.
The PSP did remarkably
well (crowd cheering)
for a company who had not delved
into handheld gameplay before.
Games such as "God of
War", "Tekken", and "FIFA"
were on the rise in many households.
(crowd clapping)
Around the time that Nintendo
were developing the DS,
Sony developed the PSP,
the PlayStation Portable.
The PSP blew my mind when I first saw it.
The screen was so big, it took
up almost the whole device.
It was almost like a smartphone
10 years before smartphones existed.
Well, we have great
competitors in almost every area.
People like
(indistinct)
do a good job.
Sony in video games does a good job.
It'll give an opportunity
for development staff
to display their creative talents.
They both use these new devices
to create more immersive worlds.
And the games they create
will have better graphics,
better sound quality,
and be an all round,
more enjoyable experience.
[Crowd] Seven, six, five,
four, three, two, one. (Cheers)
(crowd chattering)
(upbeat music)
(crowd yelling)
(upbeat music)
[Jason] The PlayStation 3
was considered a strange decision by many.
The machine was designed for power,
yet lacked quality games
one would come to expect
of Sony's new releases.
So, in 2006, Sony wanted
to release the follow-up,
the PlayStation 3,
but the release of the PS3 did not go well.
So, PlayStation were really riding high
after the PlayStation 1
and the PlayStation 2.
Everyone was excited to see
what they would have in
store for the PlayStation 3.
But actually, that's
one of the few consoles
where the release at least
fumbled the ball a little bit.
And one of the reasons for that
was it was releasing
into a quite a crowded
marketplace for gaming,
and it had a very high price point.
[Reporter 2] This is one of them.
Dylan Scott is furious that Sony customers
were only told of the problem
days after criminals targeted the network.
For the first three days, I
didn't know what was going on.
I wasn't sure if they'd been hacked into,
or if they'd shut down, or...
They still haven't told me today.
I've actually rely on going
on their personal blog
and hoping that they tell me something.
With the PlayStation 3
suddenly decided it was going to create
this really vast new kind of
microprocessor called the Cell.
And it took years. It was
incredibly expensive to do.
And when they finished,
the game developers
who had to use this chip
to actually make games
found it a nightmare to use.
So, basically, it got obsessed
by its own interest in technology
and lost sight of the bigger picture.
They had to sell it at a
really high price as well,
because this was really advanced technology
that was very expensive.
They'd also stuck a Blu-ray
player into this machine
and basically hidden a
PlayStation 2 inside it as well.
So, it is incredibly expensive
compared to everything else.
And that really set Sony back.
It had a shortage of games,
'cause people couldn't really figure out
how to make games on it for a while.
And it had all this stuff in it
that made it really expensive
compared to the Xbox 360.
[Jason] It faltered from the start
due to its incredibly
high selling point of $499,
a whole $100 more than the Xbox,
as though the history of the Sega's Saturn
was repeated with Sony
on the receiving end.
People weren't super willing
to part with all that money for a console,
which they couldn't
play that many games on.
Eventually, it did end
up selling more consoles,
but generally at the start,
it wasn't very successful.
[Jason] Despite critical setbacks,
Sony would use this console
to be the foundation for their
upcoming exclusive games.
"The Last of Us" was a
groundbreaking decision
for the company,
bringing focus into storytelling
with narrative-driven games.
This would only be the
start for Sony exclusives.
(upbeat music)
[Reporter 2] For UK
game developers like this,
insiders predict a huge
market for small firms.
The Sony have been very proactive
in terms of trying to get these smaller,
homegrown developers onto their platform.
And so, I think there's a huge opportunity
in terms of the number of jobs
that could be created in the UK,
the amount of UK content
that could go forward.
(upbeat music)
- Uh-oh. Come on.
- Yeah. Sweet Tooth.
Sweet Tooth. Fat Princess.
I love when she gets more powerful.
This is awesome. (Player laughing)
[Jason] By taking their previous mistakes
into consideration,
Sony released the PlayStation
4 with huge success,
turning the tables.
It was Xbox this time
whose price exceeded their competitors.
(upbeat music)
Andrew, there'll be
millions of misspent youths,
because of this,
and you are the man who's brought it to us.
What do you have to say to parents?
I think that we try and
be a responsible industry,
but we're about delivering fun connectivity
and an opportunity for people to play.
(upbeat music)
So, Sony really did learn
its lesson with the PS4.
It put developers first.
It made dev kits very,
very easy to port games to.
But most of all, it made it
a more exciting place to be.
The home screen was super vibrant again.
It had live streaming capability.
You had share buttons,
you could share play,
which meant you could literally be playing
with someone who was on
the other side of the world.
You could pass the controller to them
as if they were there on the sofa with you.
Sony PlayStation were really keen
to recapture the magic
of their earlier consoles
with the PlayStation 4.
So, they brought in Mark Cerny
and a bunch of other people
to really make sure that it stood out
and was just revolutionary at the time.
Mark Cerny was the guy
they put in charge of
creating the PlayStation 4.
He goes back years.
His career started in
Atari, worked with Sega.
He has a long history in video games.
Essentially to put him in charge,
Sony moved control of
the PlayStation architecture
from Japan to America.
So, really it was Mark Cernys'
kind of leadership and vision
that created the PlayStation 4.
How we use it.
(crowd clapping)
Thank you.
So, during the development
of the DualShock 4,
we worked with key partners,
and the games' continuing to evolve.
(soft upbeat music)
They also really understood
that they were marketing to gamers.
They knew that people
wanted to be able to play games.
They knew that that was a really good way
to market themselves.
Whereas the Xbox One,
which was that generation's
rival from Microsoft,
tried to market itself as more
of an entertainment system.
And they also had limits on
how you could share games
with your friends and with other people,
which PlayStation didn't have.
So, PlayStation were able
to basically bounce off
of some of the mistakes
that Microsoft made and position themselves
as kind of the console
that anyone who likes
games would want to play.
So, I think the jewel in the crown
of PlayStation's exclusive titles
in terms of development
studios, it's gotta be Naughty Dog.
You've got "The Last of Us",
"The Last of Us Part II",
the "Uncharted" series.
All of those games,
they were just pinned to the consoles
as a brilliant demonstration
of what these consoles could do.
And they're just by far and
away some of the best games
you'll ever play in terms of storytelling,
in terms of graphical capability,
in terms of soundtrack,
in terms of just everything.
They're just fantastic, fantastic games.
They're so good
that they're making TV
series inside of them now.
Both PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox
are trying to create a
whole entertainment system
in the home.
It's not just about video games anymore.
It's also about watching movies
and accessing the internet.
Initially, Xbox focused more
on that connectivity and playing
massively multiplayer game,
whereas PlayStation
was focused on high
performance and amazing graphics.
But PlayStation 4 for a start,
didn't have to be
connected online all the time.
And they didn't come with connect.
So, it had a lot less hassle around it.
It was much more orientated
towards video game players.
But there wasn't,
once you get below the surface,
there's not a huge gulf
between them technically.
They are basically two
PCs in a box under a TV.
It's more the way they were being promoted,
there was the real difference.
I actually worked as
part of a PlayStation Studio
for quite a few years, which
was incredibly exciting to me.
Not only because PlayStation
had been a part of my life for so long,
but also because the company
I worked for, Media Molecule,
had originally made "LittleBigPlanet".
And when I worked in a game shop,
we actually were there for
the launch of "LittleBigPlanet"
and "LittleBigPlanet 2", I think.
And those were games
that I was so excited to play at the time.
And also, really built on my desire
to get into game development.
So, then, when I went to
work for Media Molecule
and be a part of the PlayStation Studios,
it just felt like a real full circle moment
from the PlayStation and "LittleBigPlanet",
through to me working on "Dreams".
(subdue music)
[Jason] With the
implementation of the Sony VR
and a library of incredible
exclusive games,
the PlayStation 4 would be a statement
on machines specifically built for gaming.
Whilst the Xbox One
had a fantastic interface,
Microsoft seemed to be more
focused on software integration
and transforming the Xbox
into an all around entertainment hub.
(crowd chattering)
[Reporter 3] Okay.
So, you've decided to
queue for the PlayStation.
- Yeah.
- Why? Why decided?
- Sorry?
- Why did you decide
to do that?
Just 'cause I'm a gamer.
I already have an Xbox
One. I wanna get a PS4.
- Okay.
- Just compare.
I'm a gamer. I want a access
to all the best games, so.
[Reporter 3] What upcoming game
are you most looking forward to
for PlayStation?
- Well, right now, "Killzone".
There's several of the
games that are out here
I've already got on Xbox One,
so it's mostly just "Killzone" for now.
I'm gonna give "Knack" a go as well.
[Reporter 3] Today.
I wanna be one of the first to go home
and play my PlayStation.
I'm a real Sony fan. I
like the company structure.
I think it's a good
company to be part of. Yeah.
[Reporter 3] Cool.
And what upcoming game
are you most looking forward to?
"Killzone" and "Battlefield 4", "FIFA".
All of them really.
The graphics look extremely better
than the PlayStation 3.
And I'm glad I'm here.
(crowd speaking in foreign language)
[Group] PlayStation 4. (Cheers)
[Group Member] Yes.
(speaks in foreign language)
(robust music)
(robust music continues)
[Jason] COVID-19 forced
many to remain at home
with their devices, now was more important
than ever for communication
and entertainment,
and video games would be a vessel for it.
The Nintendo Switch
found incredible success
in otherwise, dark times.
Purchases would be made
to fill the void people
found in their homes
and "Animal Crossing: New
Horizons" would be their refuge.
(robust music)
And then, of course, after
PS4, came the PlayStation VR,
came PlayStation Move, came eventually PS5.
PS VR, it's being well-received.
PS VR 2 of course has
just come out recently.
Sony has a track record of doing this.
It tried 3D TV games for a while.
Then, PlayStation also
came out at the PlayStation 5,
its latest console, which
also has a VR headset.
VR, in general, is super interesting,
because the technology is incredible.
It's amazing.
I've tried PS VR 2 for the
first time, like a week ago.
And it's mind-blowing,
but it's still
got slightly too many barriers for entry
for most people to adopt it.
And therefore, a lot of developers
are slow to adopt it as well,
because there just aren't
that many people buying it.
So, it's that strange thing of,
until we really get a
killer app for a PS VR,
it may still just be a novelty.
(energetic music)
The PlayStation 5 is
Sony's most recent console,
and it has been wildly successful.
Even though there were supply chain issues
at launch due to the pandemic,
they still have been selling
out over and over again.
And people just cannot wait
to get their hands on a PlayStation 5.
At the moment, it's the
most popular console
and that's because it's just,
yet again, another addition
in PlayStation's line
of technical innovation
and fantastic games.
So, with PS5, there's just,
we've come so far from
the early days of PlayStation,
'cause some of the games
that are coming out now,
they're just lightyears ahead of anything
you could possibly
imagine I'm sure in the '90s.
"God of War Ragnarok",
it's a cinematic masterpiece, it just is,
that you also happen to play.
And you've got all the
"Resident Evil" remix
that are coming out now as well,
which are taking those early,
early, early day horror games
and giving them not
just a new coat of paint,
but they just feel different as well.
They're just modernized
in a really satisfying way.
Sony and Microsoft have
very different-looking consoles.
Sony tends to do quite
designery kind of looks.
They're very elegant machines.
There's style and PlayStation
5's got that curvy wings look.
The PlayStation 2
could stand up like the monolith from 2001.
Microsoft's Xboxes are more functional.
The OG Xbox is like big black box, green,
is big and it's noisy. (Chuckles)
It is not subtle design
from the Xbox point of view,
which is not necessarily a bad thing.
It works for them,
but they very much take
the box part very literally.
- Thank you very much.
- No worries.
- Have a good one.
- Thank you. You too.
[Jason] The impact of the PlayStation
has contributed to childhood
memories and the present alike.
With focus on great stories,
their games have gone as far
to become gigantic
franchises in their own right.
When I first got the PlayStation 5,
I was really excited to
play "Astro's Playroom",
which was an exclusive title
that you could play on
the PlayStation 5 at launch,
which follows a bunch of little robots.
But the thing I was most excited for
was it used the new controller,
the DualSense technology,
which was again, something that Sony
had really innovated with
and I hadn't seen before.
And what that meant
was that as well as all the usual controls
you could use on that controller,
it also used things like
advanced haptic feedback
where it will give you different vibrations
according to what you're doing.
You can use the touch pad.
And it was just really exciting to be able
to see that next step in
PlayStation technology
being used so well in a really fun game.
PlayStation now are the dominant figures
in the video game market.
PlayStation has as much market share
as the other two combined.
So, they're gonna be
around for a really long time.
The PS5 has just been
released, a monster of a box.
And the technology in the PS5
is allowing games to be
more realistic than ever before.
I think PlayStation's legacy
is that they wanna make games for everyone.
They wanna make games
for everyone from kids to adults
across all different genres
that allow people to play in
any kind of way they want,
whether that's a shooter,
whether that's an adventure
game or a platformer.
And just be the industry leaders
in having that breadth of
gameplay across their consoles.
(Aoife chuckles)
I think the key to Sony's success,
pettiness and just having
a lot of deep pockets
and a lot of technical
expertise behind you.
I love that their whole thing kicked off,
because of a stab in the back.
They really took that and ran with it.
PlayStation's legacies
to make video games
acceptable for adults and to
get them a sort of air of cool.
I wouldn't say video games
are the coolest thing on earth,
but it got them past this,
oh, it's the geeky thing for kids.
Sony wiped that away
and changed how the
world views video games.
Without Sony doing what it did
with the original PlayStation,
that wouldn't be the case.
We'd still be looking
at video games in a like,
oh, isn't that for eight-year-olds?
Or isn't that something
that geeky 16-year-olds do?
They really moved the
perception of video games.
That's their biggest legacy.
That and their video game controller,
'cause before the PlayStation,
they were like flat rectangles
and Sony made them comfortable to use
as you made them things
you could hold for long amounts of time.
The legacy of PlayStation
is just really good games,
like just focusing on what players enjoy.
Like taking a really solid
core idea and running with it,
even if that means running
with it for 30 something years.
And I like that. If it
ain't broke, don't fix it.
But in terms of consoles,
they've innovated massively.
From the original PlayStation to the PS5,
you've got huge innovations there.
You've got DualSense
controllers, haptic feedback,
you've got just gorgeous,
gorgeous graphics,
a real focus honing in on
what feels good to play.
(dreary music)
(bomb exploding)
[Narrator] In the Pacific,
in mortal combat against a fanatic fall,
the Army, the Marines, and the Navy
were driving to a finished fight.
The Philippines...
[Jason] Though Japan suffered hardship
as many countries did during World War II,
they were able to recover
and focus on innovation.
The post-war years provided the world
with gaming on a mass scale.
From old arcades to our finest consoles,
Sony has always been
at the forefront of
technological innovation.
(solemn music)
They don't just provide
good games or good consoles,
PlayStation also provides us with hope.
From nothing but war,
Japan built itself from the ground up.
No matter the dark times,
the conflict we experience,
we are always able
to lift our heads to focus on the present,
to work for the future, and
have a little fun along the way.
(solemn music)
(transition music)
We're driving cars onto Mars tonight
We're blastin' off to the stars tonight
We wanna go, go
("Driving Cars onto Mars")
(film rolling) (subdue music)
[Jason] Loss, terror, sorrow.
In the wake of World
War II, Japan was broken.
The atomic bombs were dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
signifying a conclusion
to the conflict.
[Narrator] Wooden structures
were completely collapsed by the blast.
This was Hiroshima Castle.
Its framework was demolished
by the force of the blast,
but fires of secondary
origin did not occur.
That bomb has more power
than 20,000 tons of TNT.
It is an atomic bomb.
It is a harnessing of the
basic power of the universe.
(film rolling)
[Jason] There were two options.
The first was to give up,
to fall behind.
The second
was to rebuild.
(piano music)
(robust music)
(birds chirping)
(robust music)
(robust music continues)
(robust music continues)
(lively music)
The Sony Walkman was a huge hit,
selling over 400 million units worldwide
and solidifying Sony
as a new cultural icon.
Masaru Ibuka simply wanted to be able
to privately listen to
music on long flights.
However, nobody expected how successful
or timeless the product would become.
(transition music)
Many people started to use
this Walkman recording, - Mm-hmm.
which is even for the conference.
- Yes, that's right.
- Yeah.
[Acquaintance] Yes,
it's ideal. (Faintly speaks)
We started from very, very small company,
and we found unless we produce,
we make different product, unique product
without technology,
we thought we cannot
compete existing giant.
That's why we have been trying to be unique
and different from others.
Because in this country,
there are many, many unique creative idea,
but unfortunately,
it do not become a real
good industry or business.
PlayStation, a part of Sony,
and before they started making
video games and consoles,
they were actually much more famous
for other pieces of tech,
most notably the Walkman
and then the CD Walkman,
which were universally
taken up around the world
as a way to play a music on the move.
This was a phenomenally
successful product.
Everyone had one. I had one.
(energetic music)
[Jason] During this time,
arcades and video games were on the rise,
with companies such as Nintendo and Atari
leading the race in the gaming market.
Though it could be profitable,
the gaming market was
also highly oversaturated,
and Sony chose to
avoid the race altogether,
focusing on their hardware.
Amidst the 1980s recession,
Sony would proceed to develop the CDP-101,
the world's first compact CD player.
The release spurred their competitors
to realize their own
CD players a year later,
but Sony was already
focused on their next projects.
From the '60s,
Sony ensured the
standardization of their designs.
They formed the design office
where developers and chairman
would meet to plan new innovations.
This process continues to the present day
in this very location, now
named the Creative Center.
With competition rising, Sony
finally decided to branch out.
Ken Kutaragi worked for
Sony. He was a brilliant engineer.
He was also a maverick and a hothead.
He had a reputation for
ratting out his superiors.
The PlayStation was really his idea.
He had the idea back in 1984,
after seeing this computer
graphics workstation.
It cost tens, maybe hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
It had really advanced 3D graphics,
and he thought one day, that
technology will be cheap enough
to do a home games
console with 3D graphics.
And basically, he made it happen.
[Jason] Ken Kutaragi
would be a figurehead
of the gaming developmental branch.
From a young age, he was
considered a tinkerer of sorts,
destined from childhood
to have a deep interest
in the anatomy of technology and mechanics.
Delving into the world
of gaming technology,
Ken would propose Sony's
first collaborator be Nintendo,
but not everything went according to plan.
So, in the 1980s around about,
Sony was mainly an audiovisual company.
It hadn't really delved all
that much into video games.
The sound chip was
one of the things that made
the Super Nintendo Entertainment
System so successful.
The sound was incredible
for a video game console at that time.
And so, Nintendo were really keen
to carry on with that success.
They wanted Sony to
develop a CD-ROM peripheral
for the Super Nintendo
Entertainment System.
They wanted Ken Kutaragi to do it.
So, he befriends Nintendo.
He creates a chip
to do the sound for the
Super Nintendo console.
And then, he strikes a deal
with Nintendo to create the PlayStation.
And this is not the PlayStation we know.
This PlayStation was going to be a hybrid
of the Super Nintendo.
You could plug in the cartridges,
but it would also run CD-ROM
games created by Sony.
So, in 1991, Sony very proudly announced
that they were working with Nintendo
to develop this CD-ROM peripheral.
But Nintendo was worried that Sony
were gonna take over
their video game console.
And so, Nintendo very
publicly betrayed them.
(crowd chattering)
They announced that they
were partnering with Phillips,
one of Sony's main rivals,
to deliver this peripheral.
And this was just a
knife in the back to Sony.
Sony had no idea this was coming,
because Nintendo hadn't been
returning their calls all week.
Sony had already announced
that they were partnering with Nintendo,
so that made them look quite foolish.
Sony was really upset at this betrayal.
Nintendo's problem
with Sony was that Sony
was starting to expand into
movies and to TV and to music.
So, Nintendo was starting
to worry that Sony's ambitions
weren't just about supplying
hardware to Nintendo.
It was actually planning to
launch its own games console.
Now, at the time, Sony wasn't planning to,
but Ken Kutaragi wanted it to.
So, it was Ken Kutaragi's plan.
It wasn't Sony's plan at the time.
Sony saw a Nintendo as
this toy company, really.
So, the idea that this small toy company
would betray it so publicly
and team up with a foreign rival,
Phillips, really angered Sony.
It's not how business (heart beating)
is done in Japan.
And that helped Ken to persuade them
to develop their own video game console
as a kind of revenge on Nintendo.
(tense music)
[Jason] Nintendo's
betrayal was a shock to Ken
and the heads at PlayStation.
Nintendo opting for a different
manufacturer enraged Sony.
And in 1994, the Sony
PlayStation was released.
Woo
From the start, the PlayStation
would be seen as a powerhouse,
selling over 102 million units worldwide,
massively outselling the Super Nintendo,
and putting Sony into
running for the highest-grossing
manufacturer from a single release.
Sony PlayStation first came out in 1994.
(music drowns out Tristan)
(transition music)
You are approaching Saturn.
You're only seconds away.
I have arranged for you to meet my
companion.
In May, 1995,
at the first Electronic
Entertainment Expo, E3,
there was a huge amount of
buzz around the Sony PlayStation.
The Sony PlayStation was due
to be released in the North
American market that year.
Sega had its big kind
of press conference,
and it decides it's gonna trip up Sony
by announcing the Saturn is gonna cost $399
and is launching today
in selected retailers.
Now, this seemed like a great move.
That time, Sega thought,
right, we've really got Sony now.
Everyone was blown away by this,
but it was a gambit
that massively backfired.
Sony's head of development, Steve Race,
came on stage in response to
the announcement from Sega
and just said three words,
"299", mic drop.
$100 cheaper than the Sega's Saturn.
I'm going to ask Sony
Computer Entertainment
president of America,
Steve Race, (attendee coughs)
to join me for a brief presentation.
(attendees clapping)
(attendees cheering and clapping)
That, and along with the fact
that Sega had supply problems,
because they'd released
their console early,
helped to doom the Sega Saturn
to a mediocre commercial performance,
and basically ended Sega's ascendancy.
(upbeat music)
The first PlayStation console,
the PlayStation 1 came into a market
that was starting to really
boom in home gaming.
At the time,
the Nintendo consoles
were really leading the way.
There was the NES and the
SNES that had been brought out,
and also Sega's offerings,
the Master System, and so on.
PlayStation was a very different console
from everything that Nintendo had produced.
Nintendo was, very, very family-friendly,
very bright, very colorful,
very sprite-oriented graphics.
PlayStation, from the very beginning,
was prioritizing 3D polygon graphics.
So, it was more photorealistic at the time.
It was more 3D.
And it was deliberately going after,
very aggressively, a youth-focused market.
So, young adults, teenagers.
PlayStation really wanted
to corner the market for cool gaming.
Their idea was that as opposed
to Nintendo's more
family-focused games market,
they really wanted to get the teenagers,
and also the kids
who thought they were
a little bit cool as well.
PlayStation's advertising
was very different to your
typical video game ads.
So, it's very first ad in Japan
was this crying-looking office
with all these people at their desk,
banging the desk, demanding
they have a PlayStation.
In US, they have things
like "Crash Bandicoot".
An actor dressed as "Crash Bandicoot",
going to Nintendo's offices
in Seattle with megaphone
and calling a Mario to come out
and let's have a fight in your parking lot.
And over in the UK, they
were associating PlayStation
with night clubbing and the
rave drug scene at the time.
So, it was very edgy marketing campaigns
that were very adult
and not this kitty toy vibe that
(transition music)
(music drowns out Tristan)
Let me tell you what bugs
me about human endeavor.
I've never been the human in question.
Have you?
Mankind went to the moon.
I don't even know where Grimsby is.
Forget progress by proxy.
Land on your own moon.
It's no longer about what they can achieve
out there on your behalf,
but what we can experience
up here in our own time.
It's called mental wealth.
And then, also, whereas Nintendo
is very first party-focused.
So, Nintendo makes Nintendo's games.
PlayStation came right out the gate.
They wanted to snuffle
up all third party developers
as many as possible,
and make their platform
as easy to develop for,
for all of those companies as possible.
So, that just meant that
there was just a huge,
broad gamut of games
that were being released on PlayStation.
And prior to PlayStation launching,
it was a one company industry.
And who doesn't love a bit of competition?
The more companies there
are, the better it is for gamers.
PlayStation really prided itself
on being technically forward.
The graphics were something
completely sets apart
from the Nintendo consoles at the time.
It looked new and it looked exciting.
When you look back on
it, it looked quite blocky.
But at the time,
we'd not seen anything like
that in the home console world.
They had a famous demo,
which was the T-Rex demo,
which involved a T-Rex
basically roaring at the camera.
And that was a technical display
of what you could do on that console.
And that was really exciting at the time.
The Sony PlayStation
was high performance,
low cost, simple to use,
and they used really clever advertising
to get people to buy into it.
(upbeat music)
So, it suddenly seemed
like games have arrived for adults,
and that was what Sony and
PlayStation thought to make.
Nintendo had these very tight, restrictive,
family-friendly policies about
what games could be linked.
Sony didn't care that much.
So, you've got things like "Resident Evil"
and other horror games.
The Nintendo would run a marathon.
So, it really changed the landscape
and what people thought
could count as a video game.
It became acceptable
to being your early 20s
playing video games.
Whereas before then,
it's something we should
grow out of by that point.
Fiction is quite difficult
sometimes in video games,
because, all right, say
you're playing a game
in which you fly internet
spaceships around a galaxy.
Spaceships aren't real.
The galaxy isn't real.
The people you're playing with though
and the friendships that you make there,
those are as real as anything.
And one of the most exciting things
about how the new consoles use the internet
is the possibility for
all of that to expand
and to have these huge
worlds in your living room.
When the PlayStation came out,
one of the things that really set it apart
is it had some amazing titles
from really early on in its launch.
I remember personally as a kid,
I loved to play "Crash Bandicoot".
That was a huge thing
for me. I loved that game.
And then, leading on from that,
we also had "Crash Team Racing",
which was a racing game
based with the "Crash
Bandicoot" characters.
But I also loved to play "Tomb Raider",
even though I wasn't very good at it.
And that has been one of the
most iconic PlayStation titles,
and I think was actually
a bit of a console
seller for a lot of people.
As well as that, there
were the racing games.
"Gran Turismo" was a huge deal,
and that was only
available on the PlayStation.
And people loved that,
because it took a more realistic,
modern approach to racing games.
To be perfectly honest,
I'm no good at racing games,
so I was never the best
person playing them,
but they were super popular,
and my friends really loved them.
I would say like Mario
was gaming's first mascot.
Lara Croft was gaming's first icon.
The fact that a video game character
was gracing the cover of magazines,
was selling energy drinks,
was being lusted after by a lot of people.
It was just breaking new ground,
and it just meant that games
were entering a new level of cool.
PlayStation was the '90s.
(bright music)
So, "Final Fantasy VII" was
a huge deal when it launched.
It popularized the role playing game
in the West, hands down.
It was the first "Final Fantasy"
to launch on a PlayStation console.
Prior to that, they were all on Nintendo.
It really made the PlayStation
saying it utilized all the technology
that the PlayStation had to offer.
There were those 3D polygon graphics,
making gorgeous cinematic cut scenes.
FMVs, I think they were called at the time,
full-motion videos.
I think the reason that "Final Fantasy VII"
was so successful
and why it really meant a
lot to people, myself included,
was that it showed how games
could do storytelling differently.
It showed how well games could tell stories
in a way that only games could.
"Final Fantasy" story is just,
it's an epic on a scale that
few games still have to match.
That's why we're remaking it nowadays.
And still, people are
playing and replaying it.
There's remix and
remasters and everything else.
It just captured people's imaginations.
It was a great story, it
had great characters,
and it looked absolutely
gorgeous, it still does.
[Jason] Excited to see the next release,
millions of people would
await the PlayStation 2.
Outside of shops,
customers filled the streets
in order to grab the new console.
From the 7th of September,
all could go into the shops
from the 7th of September
and place an order in advance
to book their place in
the queue, if you will.
Now, because we're only
getting a limited quantity,
we're going to have to
stop that whole process,
in fact, on the Friday,
the 17th of November.
[Jason] With the use of innovative
and edgy marketing,
alongside the promise for
even more powerful gameplay,
the PlayStation 2 would
release with a bang.
It might resemble an executive briefcase
or at a push, the latest
Breville sandwich toaster.
But made no mistake,
this Sony PlayStation 2
is the most sought-after
electronic consumer item of the year,
and guaranteed to cause more tears
on Christmas Day than Bambi.
(robust music)
[Jason] To this day,
the PlayStation 2 remains the
world's highest sold console,
clocking in at over 155 million units sold.
(robust music)
The PlayStation 1
had been wildly popular,
but at that point,
it was Sony's only foray
really into the gaming world,
and they really wanted to
prove they could do it again
and capture that audience again.
So, when the PlayStation 2 came out,
that was really important for them
to really catalyze on
what they'd done already.
And the good thing was the PlayStation 2
was readvanced graphically,
but also had a killer lineup of games.
The anticipation for
PlayStation 2 was enormous.
And so, it just sold like lightning.
No other game console
managed to catch up at all.
Nintendo and Microsoft,
by the time they got their machines out,
PlayStation's lead was sky high.
It is still the biggest selling
home games console to date.
[Reporter 1] And had their initial quota
halved to 500,000 machines,
while British shoppers
will get just 165,000 before Christmas.
So, all hail, PlayStation 2.
It plays the latest video games,
as well as DVD films and compact discs.
The big reason for the
PlayStation 2's success
was that it was also a DVD player.
DVDs were just taking off,
and suddenly, you could have games console
and a DVD player for the same price,
or sometimes less than
a DVD player on its own.
So, for many people,
it was the way DVDs became a big thing,
and that really helped drive sales.
At the same time, Microsoft and Nintendo
didn't release their
competing consoles for a year.
So, PlayStation had a very long headstart,
and it had all the great games.
It had "Tomb Raider"
and Microsoft Nintendo didn't have them,
so they got left behind.
Shoppers at this London store
are in such a virtual world
of their own that they
just don't seem to care.
Just before midnight,
they'll be picking up the
first new models available.
If you didn't pre-order
one of these machines
back in September,
then don't bother turning up tonight,
because they've all sold out,
and there won't be any PlayStation 2s
freely available on the
shelves until next year.
This is clearly a very big
money-spinner for Sony,
and it couldn't have
happened at a better time.
PlayStation games were often allowed
to be a little bit edgier
and have a little bit more adult content,
and also have a little bit more violence,
which could go either way.
But meant that they were
able to really expand on things
like the shooter genres and
more adult-themed games
that were super popular
and really help to sell their consoles.
(car passing)
So, "Silent Hill" was
psychological horror game.
You were sent into this deserted,
mysterious town that was quite foggy
with all these weird,
twisted monsters in it.
And it was basically supposed
to be a reflection of your
main characters' own psyche.
So, its this really creepy horror,
instead of this B-movie, zombie horror,
the "Resident Evil" offered.
[Jason] Now in the 20th century,
gaming consoles were improving by the year.
After the PlayStation 2,
came Sony's biggest
competitor entry into the market.
Microsoft had released the Xbox.
Understanding their demographic,
Sony chose to become
experimental with their marketing,
opting for strange adverts
that subverted expectations
for a gaming manufacturer.
Whilst people were used
to the somewhat childlike
aesthetic of Nintendo,
Sony chose to adopt a mature theme,
incorporating directors
such as David Lynch into their adverts,
and purposefully making themselves
out to be the rebel the
kids secretly wanted to be.
Welcome to "The Third Place".
[Presenter] "PlayStation
2: The Third Place".
[Jason] 2004 saw the release
of the massively successful Nintendo DS,
a repercussion of
Nintendo's continuous efforts
to branch into the handheld market,
to great degrees of success.
From the Game Boy to the DS,
Sony wanted to try their
own hand at the market.
Once again, taking on Nintendo
with the development
of the PlayStation Portable in March, 2005.
The PSP did remarkably
well (crowd cheering)
for a company who had not delved
into handheld gameplay before.
Games such as "God of
War", "Tekken", and "FIFA"
were on the rise in many households.
(crowd clapping)
Around the time that Nintendo
were developing the DS,
Sony developed the PSP,
the PlayStation Portable.
The PSP blew my mind when I first saw it.
The screen was so big, it took
up almost the whole device.
It was almost like a smartphone
10 years before smartphones existed.
Well, we have great
competitors in almost every area.
People like
(indistinct)
do a good job.
Sony in video games does a good job.
It'll give an opportunity
for development staff
to display their creative talents.
They both use these new devices
to create more immersive worlds.
And the games they create
will have better graphics,
better sound quality,
and be an all round,
more enjoyable experience.
[Crowd] Seven, six, five,
four, three, two, one. (Cheers)
(crowd chattering)
(upbeat music)
(crowd yelling)
(upbeat music)
[Jason] The PlayStation 3
was considered a strange decision by many.
The machine was designed for power,
yet lacked quality games
one would come to expect
of Sony's new releases.
So, in 2006, Sony wanted
to release the follow-up,
the PlayStation 3,
but the release of the PS3 did not go well.
So, PlayStation were really riding high
after the PlayStation 1
and the PlayStation 2.
Everyone was excited to see
what they would have in
store for the PlayStation 3.
But actually, that's
one of the few consoles
where the release at least
fumbled the ball a little bit.
And one of the reasons for that
was it was releasing
into a quite a crowded
marketplace for gaming,
and it had a very high price point.
[Reporter 2] This is one of them.
Dylan Scott is furious that Sony customers
were only told of the problem
days after criminals targeted the network.
For the first three days, I
didn't know what was going on.
I wasn't sure if they'd been hacked into,
or if they'd shut down, or...
They still haven't told me today.
I've actually rely on going
on their personal blog
and hoping that they tell me something.
With the PlayStation 3
suddenly decided it was going to create
this really vast new kind of
microprocessor called the Cell.
And it took years. It was
incredibly expensive to do.
And when they finished,
the game developers
who had to use this chip
to actually make games
found it a nightmare to use.
So, basically, it got obsessed
by its own interest in technology
and lost sight of the bigger picture.
They had to sell it at a
really high price as well,
because this was really advanced technology
that was very expensive.
They'd also stuck a Blu-ray
player into this machine
and basically hidden a
PlayStation 2 inside it as well.
So, it is incredibly expensive
compared to everything else.
And that really set Sony back.
It had a shortage of games,
'cause people couldn't really figure out
how to make games on it for a while.
And it had all this stuff in it
that made it really expensive
compared to the Xbox 360.
[Jason] It faltered from the start
due to its incredibly
high selling point of $499,
a whole $100 more than the Xbox,
as though the history of the Sega's Saturn
was repeated with Sony
on the receiving end.
People weren't super willing
to part with all that money for a console,
which they couldn't
play that many games on.
Eventually, it did end
up selling more consoles,
but generally at the start,
it wasn't very successful.
[Jason] Despite critical setbacks,
Sony would use this console
to be the foundation for their
upcoming exclusive games.
"The Last of Us" was a
groundbreaking decision
for the company,
bringing focus into storytelling
with narrative-driven games.
This would only be the
start for Sony exclusives.
(upbeat music)
[Reporter 2] For UK
game developers like this,
insiders predict a huge
market for small firms.
The Sony have been very proactive
in terms of trying to get these smaller,
homegrown developers onto their platform.
And so, I think there's a huge opportunity
in terms of the number of jobs
that could be created in the UK,
the amount of UK content
that could go forward.
(upbeat music)
- Uh-oh. Come on.
- Yeah. Sweet Tooth.
Sweet Tooth. Fat Princess.
I love when she gets more powerful.
This is awesome. (Player laughing)
[Jason] By taking their previous mistakes
into consideration,
Sony released the PlayStation
4 with huge success,
turning the tables.
It was Xbox this time
whose price exceeded their competitors.
(upbeat music)
Andrew, there'll be
millions of misspent youths,
because of this,
and you are the man who's brought it to us.
What do you have to say to parents?
I think that we try and
be a responsible industry,
but we're about delivering fun connectivity
and an opportunity for people to play.
(upbeat music)
So, Sony really did learn
its lesson with the PS4.
It put developers first.
It made dev kits very,
very easy to port games to.
But most of all, it made it
a more exciting place to be.
The home screen was super vibrant again.
It had live streaming capability.
You had share buttons,
you could share play,
which meant you could literally be playing
with someone who was on
the other side of the world.
You could pass the controller to them
as if they were there on the sofa with you.
Sony PlayStation were really keen
to recapture the magic
of their earlier consoles
with the PlayStation 4.
So, they brought in Mark Cerny
and a bunch of other people
to really make sure that it stood out
and was just revolutionary at the time.
Mark Cerny was the guy
they put in charge of
creating the PlayStation 4.
He goes back years.
His career started in
Atari, worked with Sega.
He has a long history in video games.
Essentially to put him in charge,
Sony moved control of
the PlayStation architecture
from Japan to America.
So, really it was Mark Cernys'
kind of leadership and vision
that created the PlayStation 4.
How we use it.
(crowd clapping)
Thank you.
So, during the development
of the DualShock 4,
we worked with key partners,
and the games' continuing to evolve.
(soft upbeat music)
They also really understood
that they were marketing to gamers.
They knew that people
wanted to be able to play games.
They knew that that was a really good way
to market themselves.
Whereas the Xbox One,
which was that generation's
rival from Microsoft,
tried to market itself as more
of an entertainment system.
And they also had limits on
how you could share games
with your friends and with other people,
which PlayStation didn't have.
So, PlayStation were able
to basically bounce off
of some of the mistakes
that Microsoft made and position themselves
as kind of the console
that anyone who likes
games would want to play.
So, I think the jewel in the crown
of PlayStation's exclusive titles
in terms of development
studios, it's gotta be Naughty Dog.
You've got "The Last of Us",
"The Last of Us Part II",
the "Uncharted" series.
All of those games,
they were just pinned to the consoles
as a brilliant demonstration
of what these consoles could do.
And they're just by far and
away some of the best games
you'll ever play in terms of storytelling,
in terms of graphical capability,
in terms of soundtrack,
in terms of just everything.
They're just fantastic, fantastic games.
They're so good
that they're making TV
series inside of them now.
Both PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox
are trying to create a
whole entertainment system
in the home.
It's not just about video games anymore.
It's also about watching movies
and accessing the internet.
Initially, Xbox focused more
on that connectivity and playing
massively multiplayer game,
whereas PlayStation
was focused on high
performance and amazing graphics.
But PlayStation 4 for a start,
didn't have to be
connected online all the time.
And they didn't come with connect.
So, it had a lot less hassle around it.
It was much more orientated
towards video game players.
But there wasn't,
once you get below the surface,
there's not a huge gulf
between them technically.
They are basically two
PCs in a box under a TV.
It's more the way they were being promoted,
there was the real difference.
I actually worked as
part of a PlayStation Studio
for quite a few years, which
was incredibly exciting to me.
Not only because PlayStation
had been a part of my life for so long,
but also because the company
I worked for, Media Molecule,
had originally made "LittleBigPlanet".
And when I worked in a game shop,
we actually were there for
the launch of "LittleBigPlanet"
and "LittleBigPlanet 2", I think.
And those were games
that I was so excited to play at the time.
And also, really built on my desire
to get into game development.
So, then, when I went to
work for Media Molecule
and be a part of the PlayStation Studios,
it just felt like a real full circle moment
from the PlayStation and "LittleBigPlanet",
through to me working on "Dreams".
(subdue music)
[Jason] With the
implementation of the Sony VR
and a library of incredible
exclusive games,
the PlayStation 4 would be a statement
on machines specifically built for gaming.
Whilst the Xbox One
had a fantastic interface,
Microsoft seemed to be more
focused on software integration
and transforming the Xbox
into an all around entertainment hub.
(crowd chattering)
[Reporter 3] Okay.
So, you've decided to
queue for the PlayStation.
- Yeah.
- Why? Why decided?
- Sorry?
- Why did you decide
to do that?
Just 'cause I'm a gamer.
I already have an Xbox
One. I wanna get a PS4.
- Okay.
- Just compare.
I'm a gamer. I want a access
to all the best games, so.
[Reporter 3] What upcoming game
are you most looking forward to
for PlayStation?
- Well, right now, "Killzone".
There's several of the
games that are out here
I've already got on Xbox One,
so it's mostly just "Killzone" for now.
I'm gonna give "Knack" a go as well.
[Reporter 3] Today.
I wanna be one of the first to go home
and play my PlayStation.
I'm a real Sony fan. I
like the company structure.
I think it's a good
company to be part of. Yeah.
[Reporter 3] Cool.
And what upcoming game
are you most looking forward to?
"Killzone" and "Battlefield 4", "FIFA".
All of them really.
The graphics look extremely better
than the PlayStation 3.
And I'm glad I'm here.
(crowd speaking in foreign language)
[Group] PlayStation 4. (Cheers)
[Group Member] Yes.
(speaks in foreign language)
(robust music)
(robust music continues)
[Jason] COVID-19 forced
many to remain at home
with their devices, now was more important
than ever for communication
and entertainment,
and video games would be a vessel for it.
The Nintendo Switch
found incredible success
in otherwise, dark times.
Purchases would be made
to fill the void people
found in their homes
and "Animal Crossing: New
Horizons" would be their refuge.
(robust music)
And then, of course, after
PS4, came the PlayStation VR,
came PlayStation Move, came eventually PS5.
PS VR, it's being well-received.
PS VR 2 of course has
just come out recently.
Sony has a track record of doing this.
It tried 3D TV games for a while.
Then, PlayStation also
came out at the PlayStation 5,
its latest console, which
also has a VR headset.
VR, in general, is super interesting,
because the technology is incredible.
It's amazing.
I've tried PS VR 2 for the
first time, like a week ago.
And it's mind-blowing,
but it's still
got slightly too many barriers for entry
for most people to adopt it.
And therefore, a lot of developers
are slow to adopt it as well,
because there just aren't
that many people buying it.
So, it's that strange thing of,
until we really get a
killer app for a PS VR,
it may still just be a novelty.
(energetic music)
The PlayStation 5 is
Sony's most recent console,
and it has been wildly successful.
Even though there were supply chain issues
at launch due to the pandemic,
they still have been selling
out over and over again.
And people just cannot wait
to get their hands on a PlayStation 5.
At the moment, it's the
most popular console
and that's because it's just,
yet again, another addition
in PlayStation's line
of technical innovation
and fantastic games.
So, with PS5, there's just,
we've come so far from
the early days of PlayStation,
'cause some of the games
that are coming out now,
they're just lightyears ahead of anything
you could possibly
imagine I'm sure in the '90s.
"God of War Ragnarok",
it's a cinematic masterpiece, it just is,
that you also happen to play.
And you've got all the
"Resident Evil" remix
that are coming out now as well,
which are taking those early,
early, early day horror games
and giving them not
just a new coat of paint,
but they just feel different as well.
They're just modernized
in a really satisfying way.
Sony and Microsoft have
very different-looking consoles.
Sony tends to do quite
designery kind of looks.
They're very elegant machines.
There's style and PlayStation
5's got that curvy wings look.
The PlayStation 2
could stand up like the monolith from 2001.
Microsoft's Xboxes are more functional.
The OG Xbox is like big black box, green,
is big and it's noisy. (Chuckles)
It is not subtle design
from the Xbox point of view,
which is not necessarily a bad thing.
It works for them,
but they very much take
the box part very literally.
- Thank you very much.
- No worries.
- Have a good one.
- Thank you. You too.
[Jason] The impact of the PlayStation
has contributed to childhood
memories and the present alike.
With focus on great stories,
their games have gone as far
to become gigantic
franchises in their own right.
When I first got the PlayStation 5,
I was really excited to
play "Astro's Playroom",
which was an exclusive title
that you could play on
the PlayStation 5 at launch,
which follows a bunch of little robots.
But the thing I was most excited for
was it used the new controller,
the DualSense technology,
which was again, something that Sony
had really innovated with
and I hadn't seen before.
And what that meant
was that as well as all the usual controls
you could use on that controller,
it also used things like
advanced haptic feedback
where it will give you different vibrations
according to what you're doing.
You can use the touch pad.
And it was just really exciting to be able
to see that next step in
PlayStation technology
being used so well in a really fun game.
PlayStation now are the dominant figures
in the video game market.
PlayStation has as much market share
as the other two combined.
So, they're gonna be
around for a really long time.
The PS5 has just been
released, a monster of a box.
And the technology in the PS5
is allowing games to be
more realistic than ever before.
I think PlayStation's legacy
is that they wanna make games for everyone.
They wanna make games
for everyone from kids to adults
across all different genres
that allow people to play in
any kind of way they want,
whether that's a shooter,
whether that's an adventure
game or a platformer.
And just be the industry leaders
in having that breadth of
gameplay across their consoles.
(Aoife chuckles)
I think the key to Sony's success,
pettiness and just having
a lot of deep pockets
and a lot of technical
expertise behind you.
I love that their whole thing kicked off,
because of a stab in the back.
They really took that and ran with it.
PlayStation's legacies
to make video games
acceptable for adults and to
get them a sort of air of cool.
I wouldn't say video games
are the coolest thing on earth,
but it got them past this,
oh, it's the geeky thing for kids.
Sony wiped that away
and changed how the
world views video games.
Without Sony doing what it did
with the original PlayStation,
that wouldn't be the case.
We'd still be looking
at video games in a like,
oh, isn't that for eight-year-olds?
Or isn't that something
that geeky 16-year-olds do?
They really moved the
perception of video games.
That's their biggest legacy.
That and their video game controller,
'cause before the PlayStation,
they were like flat rectangles
and Sony made them comfortable to use
as you made them things
you could hold for long amounts of time.
The legacy of PlayStation
is just really good games,
like just focusing on what players enjoy.
Like taking a really solid
core idea and running with it,
even if that means running
with it for 30 something years.
And I like that. If it
ain't broke, don't fix it.
But in terms of consoles,
they've innovated massively.
From the original PlayStation to the PS5,
you've got huge innovations there.
You've got DualSense
controllers, haptic feedback,
you've got just gorgeous,
gorgeous graphics,
a real focus honing in on
what feels good to play.
(dreary music)
(bomb exploding)
[Narrator] In the Pacific,
in mortal combat against a fanatic fall,
the Army, the Marines, and the Navy
were driving to a finished fight.
The Philippines...
[Jason] Though Japan suffered hardship
as many countries did during World War II,
they were able to recover
and focus on innovation.
The post-war years provided the world
with gaming on a mass scale.
From old arcades to our finest consoles,
Sony has always been
at the forefront of
technological innovation.
(solemn music)
They don't just provide
good games or good consoles,
PlayStation also provides us with hope.
From nothing but war,
Japan built itself from the ground up.
No matter the dark times,
the conflict we experience,
we are always able
to lift our heads to focus on the present,
to work for the future, and
have a little fun along the way.
(solemn music)
(transition music)
We're driving cars onto Mars tonight
We're blastin' off to the stars tonight
We wanna go, go
("Driving Cars onto Mars")