15 years of Playstation

15 years ago, in 1994, the first Playstations were sold in Japan in December. It made its way west (or east) to the UK, Europe and US for September of the next year. 1997 saw the launches of some world famous games, beginning with Final Fantast VII in January. Then Gran Turismo was launched in December of the same year, soon to become the best selling Playstation game for a long while.


In 1999 the Pocketstation was released in Japan, but unfortunately only there. We still hope that one day there will be a PSP phone, but the Aino just hasn't lived up to that expectation. But 1999 also brought something else, something amazing, the Playstation 2. Announced in March of 1997 and launched in Japan a year later, with it hitting the rest of the world another six months later. But the PS2 was slightly dwarfed by its brother, the PS One. It was announced in July of 2000 and outsold the PS2 for that year.


August of 2002 was when the Eye Toy was announced, and launched the next year. It also had some bundled games. One of my earliest memories of gaming was on my friend's PS2 playing on the Eye Toy hitting the bubbles, the fun was immense. And I guess that is what Nintendo thought with its Wii, but brought it to a whole new level.


Playstation then went truly portable in when it was announced at E3 in June of 2003. Released in Japan in December of 2004, hitting US 3 months later. I remember playing on my friend's PSP 1000 one christmas, I had a Sony MP3 player with 512mb and was thrilled, but thought his PSP was amazing and always wanted one. I have one now and love it, there is no other portable gaming experience like it. In December of 2003 the PSX recorder was launched in Japan to meet terrible sales and no world-wide launch. October of 2004 brought San Andreas to the PS2, soon to be the best selling Playstation game of all time. October was also when the PS2 Slim was launched.


In May 2005 Ken Kutaragi announced the PS3 at E3. The original launch date was set for Spring 2006. Finally launched in November of 2006, which I would call autumn. But maybe the seasons are different in Japan. Also, that Spiderman font got old in 12 minutes, glad for the change in the Slim. March 2006 was the end of production for the PS1, which had been going for an amazing 11 years. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite was launched for PSP in March 2008 and was going to become the best-selling PSP game. The PSP 3000 was released in October of 2008 (I got it in December). December of 2008 brought the start of Playstation Home in beta mode. In June of 2009 the PSP-Go and PS3 Slim were announced at E3, alongside a new motion-sensitive controller. The PS3 Slim was brought out in September of 2009 at a much cheaper price compared to the original PS3. Then in October the PSP-Go went on sale. An incredible 15 years for Sony and Playstation, let's hope for more of the same goodness in the years to come.