Cursed at birth yet number one until the end, Sony's PS2 redefined success
As the world awaits the announcement of the PlayStation 4, CVG is running a special three-part article that looks through the defining moments of in PlayStation history.
- Monday - The PlayStation One Revolution
- Tuesday - The Towering Triumph of PlayStation 2
- Wednesday - PlayStation 3 versus the world
Then, today at 6pm Eastern Time (11pm UK) we will stream live video of the PlayStation Meeting right here.
1999: Awaiting the curse
![Chris Deering [Image: StikiPixels - Kevin Whitlock]](http://web.archive.org/web/20130508093832im_/http://cdn.medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/dir_2977/image_297755_thumb_wide620.jpg "Chris Deering [Image: StikiPixels - Kevin Whitlock]")
For thirty years, no company had ever conquered two console wars back-to-back. Perhaps it was due to gradual complacency, or maybe there was an inherent flaw in offering the same type of product twice in an industry that's constantly changing direction. But for whatever reason, every time a company conquered a console cycle, their next machine carried a curse.
Chris Deering, a renowned games industry veteran, was the president of PlayStation Europe when he prepared his business for a second console.
"From day one on PS1, I started thinking about what I would do to make sure PS2 could win round two," Deering said in a recent interview with Eurogamer.
"Nintendo and Sega had never won two in a row. We used to say it was like winning two gold medals in two back-to-back Olympics. It just never happened. So I set that as a personal goal."
[Further reading: PlayStation 2: The Insiders' Story - Eurogamer]
March 1999: "PlayStation 2000"
Comparing both the PS1 and PS2 reveal events offer a kind of short-hand description of how far the business had come during those years.
The first PlayStation launched on the quiet side; it was an economical, grassroots endeavour - gradually gaining support from within the industry until it was released, rather cautiously, across select regions of Japan.
Sony's PS2 showcase was a media event laced in pomp and pageantry. Some 1,500 journalists, analysts and game industry luminaries attended, as did Sony's longstanding president Norio Ohga, who spoke on stage about how proud he was to attach the company's name to PlayStation.
The PS2 reveal was just as much a Sony event as it was a PlayStation one. In the early PS1 days, many Sony executives tried to dissuade the business from building a games device. By March 1999, and about half a billion PlayStation games sales later, there was no such debate within the corporation.
Restructuring Sony was seen by analysts as a brutal necessity, as several divisions in the business were haemorrhaging cash. Failures in other parts of Sony made the PS1's success even more noticeable: In the first half of that fiscal year, Playstation accounted for 26 per cent of Sony's operating profits.
This time, at a deluxe concert hall in Tokyo, Sony wanted to make clear where it was stacking its chips.
But despite the hype and expenses, the press conference did not offer a complete picture of the next PlayStation. No console was shown, and not even the name was decided (Sony was internally debating whether to call the machine "PS2" or "PlayStation 2000").
Deering later recalled that Sony had "promised the world" with PlayStation 2. A press release issued the same day on March 2, typified Sony's approach with the headline:
"Sony Computer Entertainment Announces the Development of the World's Fastest Graphics Rendering Processor".
The notice claimed that Sony's next generation console would boast an image "comparable to movie-quality 3D graphics in real time". In fact, up until the launch of the PS2, PlayStation executives would regularly claim that its games would resemble the graphical fidelity of Toy Story.
Target render videos from PlayStation, Namco and SquareSoft were, in retrospect, fairly misleading. They were nonetheless drooled over. Sony proudly claimed that the console's peak drawing capacity was "75 Million polygons per second", while Kutaragi infamously referred to its processor as the "Emotion Engine" - a contentious concept that the PS2 had the capability required to simulate emotion.
The next PlayStation had arrived, and it was a monster.
March 1999: Sony cuts old ties
The decision to close divisions and shed 10 per cent of its workforce had direct bearings on Ken Kutaragi - PlayStation was now at the heart of Sony's reconfigured empire.
Kutaragi, branded internally as a "wild card" by some executives, said he was not phased by the new responsibilities.
''I don't feel any different than I did before we made the announcement,'' he told the New York Times.
''We're just going to be forced to educate the Sony Corporation a bit.''
Comments
28 comments so far...
Sangor on 19 Feb '13 said:
That was a great read Rob, really looking forward to Wednesday now.
TheDragonDoji on 19 Feb '13 said:
It would be the greatest trolling of the world if Wednesday's reveal turned out to be the 2 girls, 1 cup video and Kaz Hirai giving us the finger.
Bambis Dad on 19 Feb '13 said:
No mention of ICO or the dodgy car boot marketeers?
cult on 19 Feb '13 said:
£300 for a console!!!
Crazy talk, half the price of a DVD player, who paid £600 for a DVD player, anyone?
Allowing for inflation that's £408, no one would pay that for a games console/DVD player.
Not until 2007
Pramath on 19 Feb '13 said:
But... Nintendo did win two back to back rounds with NES and SNES
Bambis Dad on 19 Feb '13 said:
The NES was also in production, in Japan at least, for thirty years and still had a lower system failure rate than any Sony console. Call me a Sony fanboy will you, you Xbox wankers? It's all NES baby.
metallicorphan on 19 Feb '13 said:
I was always a Nintendo man back in the 80s and 90s...did the NES and SNES not win against the relevant SEGA's machines??
Good read anyway,brought back a few memories
EDIT: Okay i guess i ought to read the comments before posting the same thing
starvinbull on 19 Feb '13 said:
Home 2.0 would be the most awesome troll ever.
KesMonkey on 19 Feb '13 said:
Really? REALLY?
Not sure if genuine ignorance, or attempt to re-write history.
The Famicom/NES was the best selling generation 3 console, and the Super Famicom/SNES was the best selling generation 4 console.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28third_generation%29#Sales_comparison
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28fourth_generation%29#Worldwide_sales_standings
edit: Ha. Beaten to it. Glad I'm not the only one who actually knew this to be total bulls**t.
Windowlicker79 on 19 Feb '13 said:
That's kind of the point. The only people who were buying the relatively new DVD players at the time were wealthy home cinema enthusiasts. At the time they were retailing for £600-£1000, with top end models going way over £2000.
The £300 price tag of the PS2 was a relative bargain, especially as it was made by Sony, a trusted AV manufacturer.
This is why in the same period that they sold 1 million consoles, they only sold 600k software titles. People were buying them as a DVD player with no intention of playing games on it.
Bambis Dad on 19 Feb '13 said:
Not in the UK according to theAnti Nintendo Faggotory of CnVG's Bias. If Chris Scullion reads this then I hope he understands I am joking. If he doesn't then screw you CnVG, you Sony bumders. I need a woman, I really do.
pjfitzy on 19 Feb '13 said:
Really enjoyed both this and part one, looking forward to tomorrow's article...and hopefully a PS4 to go with it!
xJohnOx on 19 Feb '13 said:
PlayStation 2 was one of the greatest consoles of all time. In my opinion, it was the golden age of Sony's dominance of the console market. My feelings are now that Sony is no longer the juggernaut it once was, and the PlayStation brand has been severely damaged over the last couple of years.
This soon to be announced console could make or break the PlayStation brand. I wish them well but my money is on Microsoft dominating one again, then with a bit of luck, I hope SEGA come back into the console market. Man oh man, imagine that!
DoomGuy84 on 19 Feb '13 said:
The PS2 was a great console and i still have about 20 games for it but looking back Sony hugely over hyped it and it was nowhere near as powerful as they made it out to be - the Gamecube and Xbox were miles ahead in terms of graphics.
toaplan on 19 Feb '13 said:
Yes, the SNES ultimately went on to sell more total units than the Mega Drive, but that was mainly because of its longer lifecycle. The Saturn replaced the Mega Drive already in Dec 1994, whereas the N64 didn't replace the SNES until mid-1996.
SNES vs. MD was always a neck-and-neck race and the MD might have been ahead at some points (Sonic 2sday...) and remained on top until the end in a key market like the US:
"According to a 2004 study of NPD sales data, the Sega Genesis was able to maintain its lead over the Super NES in the American 16-bit console market."
That said, the Super Famicom easily outsold the MD in Japan.
So I guess one could make a case that the Genesis "won" the 16-bit console war when it was on, between 1990-93/94, even though the SNES pulled ahead in "overtime" from 1994/95 onwards. Kinda like one could say that the Wii won the X360/PS3/Wii console war... even if the PS3 should one day surpass the Wii's lifetime sales. (Personally I think that the final total numbers are somewhat more important)
Well-written article by the way... Did anyone really understand the symbols of that "Third Place" ad though? (apart from the PS2 logo at the end
)
Bambis Dad on 19 Feb '13 said:
Surely final sales are all that count Toa? Otherwise a fair amount of PS2's sales, not enough to change first place, over lap with the PS3's and therefore affect which figures count. The article is wrong as Nintendo won thrice. NES, SNES and PS1 as the first article places all the blame at Nintendo's door.
Bored now.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110529042043/villains/images/c/c1/Vampire_Willow_Rosenberg.jpg
FAO Chris 2008.
metallicorphan on 19 Feb '13 said:
especially as these guys were thinking about the PS2 console in 1999,quite a few years after the NES/SNES years
Bambis Dad on 19 Feb '13 said:
Not sure which side you're coming down on MO? Did Sony or Nintendo have the first back to back success? Please say as it'll be easier for me to disagree.
metallicorphan on 19 Feb '13 said:
from a 1999 perspective when the SONY people were putting the PS2 together i would say Nintendo had the first Back to Back success,so i find it hard to understand why this guy in the CVG article says there had never been a back to back success
Toplan makes a point if the figures at the time(early 90s) were roughly neck and neck(although if what he says that the figures were still higher in Japan,i would still give it to Nintendo,worldwide is what i think in,not just U.S.)
So,yeah ...what your first post of this page says,"Final Sales" i reckon should be what count,IF the specific Nintendo and SEGA consoles were actually out at the same time as each other
goggy on 19 Feb '13 said:
Sony proudly claimed that the console's peak drawing capacity was "75 Million polygons per second"
The 75 million number was reduced to 66 million. Afterwards, it was admitted that these PS2 numbers were a peak performance figure for flat -shaded, identically shaped polygons.
Part of the problem was the 4MB VRAM cache on it's GS processor, the Emotion Engine. While it's true it was capable of achieving 10-12 million polys/sec, the poor design of the EE and its small pipeline to main memory restrict the final number to roughly half of that.
Some more facts for ya.
I can't wait until tomorrow night! Muahahahaha...
Barry316 on 19 Feb '13 said:
Why, is a new Wii U game finally released then?
Or maybe you're getting laid?
Stealth will finally watch Barney with you?
*note - only one of those is likely*
goggy on 19 Feb '13 said:
You're right, so don't stand me up.
Stephen King on 19 Feb '13 said:
Microsoft dominating one again?
When have they ever dominated?
PS and PS2 sold more than x-box and x-box 360.
PS won.
PS2 won.
Wii is leading this gen and PS3 will sell more when PS4 and the next x-box hit the shelves.
The Wii and x-box will stop selling but the PS3 will go on selling like the PS did long after the PS2 came out.
SONY has just stopped PS2 production so BELIEVE me when I say that the PS3 will win over the x-box also this gen so if the PS4 gets a better launch and a better PUSH than the PS3 did then PS4 will win the next gen also so x-box haven't won ANY gen or beaten the Playstatin brand yet so far.
X-box is a little in front of the PS3 in total sales now but make sure to watch what happens when the PS4 and next x-box has been around for two years.
THEN and only THEN will you really see what happens in this gen.
Barca Azul on 20 Feb '13 said:
Good read, I've a feeling PS4 will do better than the PS3.
thelazyone on 20 Feb '13 said:
Just been leaked from trusted sources that the PS4 box and PS4 controller will be shown tomorrow night, theres a host of other information leaked but here are the images.
PS4
http://codamon.com/wp-content/uploads/2 ... tables.jpg
PS4 pad
http://i.imgur.com/TWyXZ.jpg
Always first with the news
Barry316 on 20 Feb '13 said:
I probably will, it's getting weird you making me dress like Princess Peach. Plus it's obviously option 3 you want the most.
runadumb on 20 Feb '13 said:
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhh
That's right, talk dirty to me!
Bambis Dad on 20 Feb '13 said:
How many of these console sales were to hotels? When I go to the US I always pick a hotel that can still offer a SNES.