Before the PlayStation could launch, it first had to fail. Sony’s first foray into game consoles came to North America on September 9, 1995, nearly a year after it launched in Japan, and several years after it grew out of a cancelled collaboration with Nintendo. These days, PlayStation is a pillar of the games industry, as much as any company can be, but at the time of the first console’s release, it was a risky bet that even some of its creators seemed only half sold on. Despite that, by the time its North American release came around, it was an immediate hit, setting it up to become one of the most important consoles ever.
PlayStation famously began its life as a failed peripheral for the Super Nintendo. Sony had manufactured chips for Nintendo’s Super Famicom, which led to the two companies beginning work on a CD-based addition to the console in the late ‘80s. Work on that project progressed so far that Sony even announced the Play Station (its name was two words at the time) at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, before Nintendo pulled the plug just a day later. That reportedly enraged the president of Sony, who launched the project to develop the PlayStation as a standalone console in what would become an incredibly consequential act of corporate pettiness.
