PlayStation



"U R Not e ."

The PlayStation's creation was a bumpy ride. It began as a CD drive for the SNES, but Nintendo noticed too late that the contract was too favorable to Sony, jumped ship, and went to bed with Philips (which ultimately led to the creation of the infamous CD-i). Publicly scorned and fuming with resentment, Sony decided to take what they had at that point and make their own console. Many expected it to be an also-ran, at most a distant third place. Yet the angry newcomer came out swinging and crushed the competition, leaving them asking: what the hell just happened?

Here's how this perfect storm happened: while everyone else fucked something up, Sony got pretty much everything right. While Sega's Saturn was a complex and expensive design that left even the best programmers scratching their heads, Sony did a simple but powerful machine, and provided far better development tools; and while Nintendo tried to gouge third-parties with high manufacturing costs for Nintendo 64 cartridges, Sony offered their CD manufacturing plants and distribution structure to publish their games at much lower costs and faster turnover.

Ultimately, it became the best selling console ever (later surpassed by the PlayStation 2), so you will find a vast game library. Quite a lot of garbage in the pile too, but that's what this wiki is here for, right?

PlayStation games can be played straight on a PS2 or PS3 (but not PS4 and PS5, of course they want you to re-buy those classic titles digitally). And they can be easily converted into the "eboot" format for a softmodded PSP or Vita. If you want to emulate its games on your PC, use DuckStation.

There was also a mini-console version, the PlayStation Classic, that was a huge mess. But if you find one cheap, use Project Eris to add new games and emulate other systems.

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