Nintendo PlayStation

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Prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation

Nintendo PlayStation refers to an unpublished game console that was created as a joint project between Nintendo and Sony . As part of this collaboration, the Super NES CD-ROM system (often abbreviated as SNES-CD) was planned as an accessory for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), but also a console from Sony called Play Station at the time . From this joint project, the PlayStation emerged, with which Sony entered the video game market and became a competitor to Nintendos. The name Nintendo PlayStation, which is widespread in the present, is intended to differentiate it from the later PlayStation from Sony. A prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation, which appeared 24 years after initial planning in 1988, is considered one of the rarest objects in the history of video games .

history

Nintendo was the leading video game company around 1988. But the 1987 published in Japan PC Engine of NEC and it swiftly gained popularity at which they both published in Japan in 1988 Sega Mega Drive , as well as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) exceeded. (In Europe and the USA only the Mega Drive was in competition with the NES.) In this situation, the CD-ROM² for the PC engine came onto the Japanese market in 1988. It was the first console with CD-ROM technology. Back then, Sony had a partnership with Nintendo in the form of a licensed technology: Nintendo used Sony's SPC700 processor (designed by Ken Kutaragi ) to play sound and music in their upcoming SNES, due to be released in 1990. Kutaragi, a young Sony engineer who would later become known as the "father of the PlayStation", convinced Nintendo to put a CD-ROM drive in the SNES. This is how the story of the SNES CD-ROM began. Nintendo saw an opportunity in the emerging CD-ROM technology to gain a technological edge over its competitor Sega and to keep up with the offer from NEC, which posed a growing threat to its market power.

Nintendo and Sony agreed that Sony would develop the CD-ROM as an accessory for the SNES and, in return, Nintendo would allow Sony to develop its own Play Station as a multimedia CD-ROM device with a connection for SNES modules. So two compatible devices from both manufacturers were planned. Both the SNES CD-ROM and the Play Station console were announced at the 1989 Consumer Electronics Show .

Reason for the differences between Nintendo and Sony

The contract gave Sony the rights to develop and sell CD-ROM software that runs on the Super NES-compatible computer they named "Play Station". Under the agreement, Nintendo did not have to pay license fees or obtain approval for CD-ROM games. Nintendo would have only been involved in hardware sales. The CD-ROM format to be used for both devices was to be developed by Sony, which meant that the company would own licensing rights to all games produced using its proprietary technology. This was in stark contrast to the business practices of Nintendo at the time. To date, it is unclear whether Nintendo had interpreted the contract incorrectly or whether it was a subtle contract text from Sony. One reason for Nintendo's negligence in signing the contract was probably that it had fundamental doubts about the suitability of CD-ROMs for video games. Sony Computer's former chairman Shigeo Maruyama said Sony had said it would not care about video games. Sony and Nintendo were probably more likely to have encyclopedias, karaoke software, and other applications published on CD-ROM. However, this was not explicitly stated in the contract.

Nintendo Playstation Prototype (38460196990) .jpg

Nintendo nevertheless had doubts about this contract, but had probably not communicated these doubts to Sony. Sony introduced the Play Station at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. The day after this performance, Nintendo surprisingly announced for Sony and the public that it had also signed a contract with Sony's competitor Philips to develop a CD-ROM system for the SNES. The difference to the contract with Sony was that Nintendo received the license rights to all CD-ROMs produced for the SNES.

Development of Sony

Nintendo Playstation Prototype (25399439107) .jpg

Because Sony felt offended by this surprising announcement and had already invested time and money in the development of its device, Sony's President Norio Ohga and Kutaragi continued the project as a stand- alone system. So Sony decided to enter the video game market itself. Since Nintendo was still using the Sony sound chip in the Super NES and had broken the contract by alliance with Philips, Sony managed to negotiate the right to keep the slot for SNES modules on their console, with Nintendo doing most of it Should receive profits from the licensed games for the planned Play Station . Sony presented its Play Station at the Tokyo International Electronics Show in 1991, with a planned release date in the summer of 1992, six months before the originally planned launch of the SNES CD-ROM.

Development of Nintendos

The SNES was launched in the United States in September 1991, and in April 1992 Nintendo posted in its magazine Nintendo Power on the progress of the SNES CD-ROM, which was announced for January 1993, but provided only vague details. It became clear that Nintendo and Philips were planning a device that wasn't just like Sony's device, which was essentially just a CD-ROM drive attached to an SNES. The SNES CD-ROM planned by Philips and Nintendo should also improve the computing power of the SNES by adding 8 megabits of RAM. Games for the SNES CD-ROM have not been announced. Instead, the article mentioned only a few of the relatively few games available for PC CD-ROM systems at the time, but did not claim that those games would appear.

On October 14, 1992, one day before the Sega Mega-CD was released in the USA, Nintendo and Sony announced that they had suddenly agreed on a contract and that Sony would now work with Nintendo and Philips on the SNES CD-ROM.

Sony founded the subsidiary Imagesoft to develop and publish games for the Sega CD and the SNES. Nintendo gradually postponed work on the SNES CD-ROM after seeing the errors on the Sega Mega-CD and the Philips CD-i . In the end, since it was clearly not going to get any further support from Nintendo, Sony decided not to develop the original Play Station any further, and the device became the stuff of legend. What was not known at the time was that Sony would launch its own PlayStation in 1994 and launch a comprehensive attack on Nintendo's supremacy in the market.

Nintendo has never given an exact date for the release of the SNES CD-ROM, has not announced any games and has not set a retail price. The device just quietly disappeared. One reason for this was that the next generation of hardware was about to hit the market. At the beginning of 1993, Nintendo began to work with Silicon Graphics on the development of the Nintendo 64 .

The Nintendo 64 was based on 3D graphics and essentially overtook the 32-bit CD-ROM hardware generation. Sony completely redesigned the Play Station and removed the slot for SNES modules. Sony's PlayStation (consolidated from then on) was released on December 3, 1994 in Japan and in September and November 1995 in the rest of the world. The Sega Saturn was released in Japan in November 1994 and was in competition with the PlayStation. The PlayStation conquered the video game world in the 1990s and ended Nintendo's dominance of the video game market. In 1999 Sony had sold 70 million devices, while Nintendo could only sell 28.7 million Nintendo 64s . Nintendo survived economically through the capital accumulated in the past and the dominant position of the Game Boy in the handheld area.

The rediscovery after decades

Prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation with controller and the module required for playing CDs

The prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation with SNES cassette slot and CD drive appeared 24 years later in 2015, when the names Sony and Nintendo had long been competitors on the market. It had a CD-ROM drive and a bay for modules. The prototype was discovered by accident while cleaning up a bankrupt company. This discovery was an important moment in the history of the SNES CD-ROM. When news of this prototype spread, many remained skeptical. Not even the head of Sony PlayStation's Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida , wanted to confirm its authenticity. Probably only 200 pieces of the prototype were produced. After the surprising end of the partnership between Nintendo and Sony at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, the prototypes were supposed to be collected and destroyed. The user who uploaded the first images to Reddit found the prototype in his father's basement, who discovered it while cleaning up the remains of an insolvent company. The head of this company was the former head of Sony Interactive Entertainment , the writer Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson . He probably received the prototype during his time at Sony and took it with him. The prototype controller is a SNES controller with a Sony logo.

The prototype that has surfaced is considered one of the rarest consoles in video game history. Its authenticity was controversial for some time before authenticity was confirmed.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Brian J. Wardyga: The Video Games Textbook. History. Business. Technology. CRC Press, Boca Raton 2019, ISBN 978-0-8153-9091-6 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Dominic Arsenault: System Profile: Sony PlayStation . In: Mark JP Wolf (Ed.): The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond . Greenwood Press, Westport 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-33868-7 , pp. 178–178 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Chris Kohler: The Weird History Of The Super NES CD-ROM, Nintendo's Most Notorious Vaporware. In: Kotaku . September 7, 2018, accessed October 10, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Witold Pryjda: Nintendo PlayStation. Authenticity of the prototype finally confirmed. In: WinFuture. November 9, 2015, accessed October 10, 2019 .
  5. ^ A b Richard Lai: We turned on the Nintendo PlayStation: It's real and it works. In: Engadget . June 11, 2015, accessed October 10, 2019 .
  6. ^ John Woll: Nintendo PlayStation. Console prototype appears after 24 years. In: WinFuture. July 5, 2015, accessed October 10, 2019 .