It turns out that Sony wasn’t too sure that the original PlayStation was doing that well.
As it stands, the original PlayStation is the sixth best-selling console of all time. It’s not as popular as the PS4 or the first-place console, the beloved PS2, but it’s still impressive. And despite all 102.49 million of those sales before the console actually launched, according to Ken Kutaraga, former CEO of Sony SIE, also known as the “father of PlayStation”, Sony didn’t really have that much faith in it and neither did anyone else he didn’t do it either. Kutaragi recently appeared during an official speech at Tokyo Game Show 2024, where he talked about preparations for the console’s launch (thanks, GamesRadar).
“We wanted to share our passion. We wanted to hear what their expectations were and what they didn’t expect, so we wanted to hear from them,” Kutaragi shared. “So we visited dozens of companies, if not hundreds, we visited a lot of game developers, it was a great memory… they were not interested at all. They just said, “Don’t do it. There were many companies and none of them were successful. You will fail. That’s what they told us.” Now, 30 years later, Kutaragi and the rest of the team were obviously right to make that decision, but it’s still weird to imagine so many people saying not to do it.
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Kutaragi continued by saying that “even at Sony, no one believed we would be successful.” At the time, Sony was obviously a tech- and especially music-focused company, so the idea that it wasn’t completely sold on the idea of a still quite juvenile medium isn’t all that surprising.
Now, of course, Sony is celebrating PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, and it’s doing so with a special bundle that immediately sold out, with scalpers flogging their not-so-hard-earned prizes on eBay for ridiculous prices. Happy birthday, PlayStation!
