Sony PlayStation Awarded Guinness World Record for Best-Selling Game Console of All Time

Tsing

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Some gamers thought that Sony didn't have a chance against Nintendo and Sega when it launched the PlayStation on December 3, 1994, but boy, were they wrong. It is now 25 years later, and the console has managed to win a Guinness World Record for being "the best-selling home video game console brand ever, with over 450 million units sold across the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PS4." The father of the PlayStation himself, Ken Kutaragi, was on hand to receive the award.

On December 3, 1994 – 25 years ago this week – the first PlayStation made its global debut in Japan. Starting from a humble beginning as an upstart within Sony, Ken Kutaragi and team delivered on a vision to elevate video games as a form of entertainment that everyone could enjoy, and to make a platform for game developers to express their creativity. The original PlayStation sold 100,000 units in Japan on its first day and went on to become the first-ever home console to surpass 100 million units sold globally.
 
Aahh the PlayStation. I think that was the first system I bought with my own money, rather than getting a console as a gift. Or maybe that was N64. One of those two. N64 still hooked up in my gaming room today, as with most of my consoles, but PS1 is in storage. I usually just play PS1 games on PC or PS3. PS2 was the only hardware-based solution I used for PS1, but my PS2 Slim doesn't ****ing read discs now, so that option is out (been looking into repair or buying another unit when funds allow). I don't have a PS4 yet (missed a Black Friday deal to get a Pro for $250), but I've borrowed the system several times since 2013 and have already gone through a few of the exclusives.

I always really liked PlayStation 1's black CDs. I know that PS2 games that came on CDs instead of DVDs had blue discs, but I've never seen one in person. Now we live in an age where games don't have to come on any kind of physical media at all. Console versions that don't even have optical drives, like the second version of the XB1 S. I guess blu-rays have an interesting color of their own though, and those custom Panasonic/Matsushita discs the Wii U uses. Speaking of which, those Wii U discs, with their weird soft rounded edges, just feel so strange to the touch. Kinda hard to get a grip on actually, compared to most optical media.

I still enjoy hearing the sounds of the Saturn, PS1 and Dreamcast disc drives, the motors and the lenses. Never spent much time with a Sega CD Model 1 (the one that sits under the Genesis/Mega Drive rather than to the side), but the Model 2 was relatively quiet. Some of the other systems that had CD drives or CD add-on units I haven't yet personally used, such as the one for Jaguar, TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine, etc. PS1 was CD, PS2 was DVD, PS3 was blu-ray, and PS4 kept the blu-ray drive but only used it for installing games to internal storage from the discs (or watching DVD/BD movies). I remember when Microsoft threw an HDD in the original Xbox and a lot of my homeys and I were like "finally!" Unrelated, but turning on a PC and not hearing floppy seek still seems wrong to me. Somehow more wrong than not hearing POST beeps anymore.

Never been a fan of the DualShock series, but DualShock 4 isn't too bad. I never had any PS1 controllers with analog sticks until I got a second PS1 that came with a DualShock. Always hated the DualShock series D-buttons rather than a normal DPad. Then again, could be worse. Like Xbox 360's DPad. DualShock 4 ain't so terrible as the past controllers in that regard either. I did think the use of two rumble motors was neat when DualShock first showed up, but during the same generation the analog thumbstick got introduced by Nintendo, which we were still trying to get used to, it was weird to see Sony slap two of them on a controller. Turned out to be quite helpful, as we saw over the coming generations.

Yeah my first PS1 had two issues that made me retire it. The drive motor wouldn't spin quite often, though you could sometimes get it started by spinning the disc by hand and then closing the lid. Then the memory card ports stopped working completely. That system was hard-modded to play imports and burned discs. Too bad I didn't just wait for the device that just plugs into the parallel I/O port in the back that accomplishes the same thing (which was also cheaper than most people were charging to mod systems). My second PS1 was a model that didn't have that port, so I got screwed there too.

The only PS1 memory card I had was a 24-in-1 unit. You used a button combination on the controller to change between the 24 memory cards. The PS2 did not recognize this button combination, so the only way to change between virtual memory cards was on PS1 hardware. This multi-memory card eventually malfunctioned to where to got stuck on one specific card (one of my brother's), and you could not switch to any other card. So yeah we lost all our data. Or rather, lost access to it. I didn't have anything like a Dex Drive back then to back up PS1 saves on PC back during those 5th-gen days. For PS2 I had multiple physical memory cards, for PS3 and PS4 I just used flash drives. I have no other memory cards for PS1, so I guess that's another reason why I never play PS1 games on the hardware anymore. They're not hard to find, even brand new ones, but eh why spend money when not absolutely necessary. Games look better on PS3 and especially PC anyways. I don't even use my PS1 game discs with emulators because just faster to load a disc image from HDD/SSD. So yeah, not really interested in grabbing PS1 memory cards at this point.

Well, I guess we'll see where PS5 takes things. SSD? Ray-tracing? Been hearing all kinds of stuff. Never imagined when Sony first showed up with a freakin' console in the mid 90s that they would have lasted this long, or been this successful. I was surprised when I found out about a decade ago that Ken Kutaragi was the one who designed the SPC700 audio processor in the SNES/Super Famicom, one of my favorite audio chips, and that he did the work in secret. His bosses were furious when they found out, and he almost lost his job. I think he had wanted to get into the game industry cuz he saw how much fun his kids were having with the NES/Famicom. He ended up masterminding the creation of a dynasty. During the 5th-gen days I never knew about the PS1's origins, how Nintendo had backed out of a deal with Sony and screwed them over. I remember in recent years seeing a working example of the PlayStation CD add-on for the Super NES that eventually led to the actual PS1 console. One generation Sony enters the console space, the very next generation Sega exits. Live long enough and you see enough crazy ****.

My current working PS1 is the model before they switched to the smaller PSOne or whatever the **** it was called. The last one with the original PlayStation look. My PS2 is a Slim. I have a fat PS3 that does not have PS2 back-compat. The original PS1 I had that broke, I gave it to a friend who is a console repair guy and modder to **** around with as he see fits.

Oh ****, I completely forgot about PSP! I have a launch model PSP. Hated the blurring ghosting LCD screen on that thing. Still, it was amazing to see such a large widescreen display in a handheld. Later revisions were considerably better though. Lighter and higher quality displays (although the disc drive door felt cheap). PSP Go is an interesting device I would've liked to try out. Handheld console with a dock, like the Switch. I do not yet have a PS Vita, but I'd like the original version with the OLED screen. Those UMD discs for PSP, man it was crazy to have a handheld console with spinning optical media. Completely forgot that Sony sold actual movies on UMD format.

(Above text copied from this post: https://forums.thefpsreview.com/thr...ersary-33-9-mhz-cpu-32-bit-gpu.1396/post-7739)
 
Aahh the PlayStation. I think that was the first system I bought with my own money, rather than getting a console as a gift. Or maybe that was N64. One of those two.

Similar to me. I was delivering newspapers as a pre-teen to save up for a N64. Bought one, however, the lack of games at the time (think there were around three during the launch window) and Final Fantasy VII looming on the PS, compelled me to sell the N64 (turning my back on being an avid Nintendo fan for a couple of generations) and picking up a PS.

Felt guilty and regretful at first (early Playstation titles didn't look at all that good lined up against N64 games) but FF VII made me instantly lose all regret. Game was my obsession for quite some time after its release.
 
My first game system I bought with my own money I believe was the Sega Genesis. I did buy the the original PS also. I remember playing the original Doom for the first time and was hooked.
 
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