‘The Father Of The PlayStation’ remembers how everyone at Sony was convinced it would flop

Ken Kutaragi, known as “The Father Of The PlayStation”, has claimed that everyone at Sony thought the original PlayStation would be a massive flop.

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While working at Sony in the ‘90s, Kutaragi helped Nintendo work on the soundchip for its upcoming Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which led to the two companies working together on a CD-Rom add-on for the console. While the project never launched publicly, it led to Kutuagi working on the original PlayStation as well as overseeing production of the PS2 and the PS3.

Released in 1994, the PlayStation became the first console to sell over 100million units and established Sony as a leader in the gaming space.

Reflecting on the development of the console, Kutaragi told the crowd at Tokyo Game Show how he visited hundreds of game developers. “We wanted to share the passion. We wanted to hear their expectations and what they did not expect.”

However, Sony didn’t get the warmest of welcomes. “They were not interested,” said Kutaragi. “They just said, ‘Don’t do it. There were multiple companies and none of them were successful. You are going to fail.’ That’s what they told us. Even within Sony, nobody believed that we would be successful,” he added.

Thirty years later, and PlayStation remains one of the Big Three console creators. To celebrate the anniversary, Sony recently announced details of a special, throwback edition of the upcoming PS5 Pro. Despite a hefty £960 price tag, the limited-edition console sold out in seconds, with a number immediately popping up on resale sites for thousands.

However, PlayStation users have had an annoying few weeks. A technical issue meant the console’s homepage was taken over by out-of-date, intrusive ads while yesterday (October 1) the PSN was down for several hours.

It comes after the controversial announcement of the PS5 Pro. The mid-cycle upgrade comes with a number of new features to improve graphics, but the digital-only console will also set players back £700. Defending the price, one senior exec claimed Sony was only targeting the “the most engaged players” with the console.

In other news, Nintendo has forced fan-made videos to be removed from YouTube while work on Switch emulator Ryujinx has also been halted. It comes after Nintendo started legal action against Palworld developer Pocketpair, claiming the studio had infringed on “multiple patent rights”.

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