It turns out that Sony was not particularly confident in the original PlayStation doing all that well.
As it stands, the original PlayStation is the sixth best selling console of all time. It’s not quite as popular as the PS4 or the console that takes the number one spot, the beloved PS2, but it’s still a very impressive feat. And despite all 102.49 million of those sales, before the console actually launched, according to Ken Kutaragi, the former Sony SIE CEO who is also known as “the father of the PlayStation”, Sony didn’t actually have all that much faith in it, and neither did anyone else. Kutaragi recently made an appearance during the 2024 Tokyo Game Show official keynote, where he spoke about the lead-up to the launch of the console (thanks, GamesRadar).
“We wanted to share our passion. And we wanted to hear what their expectations were and what they did not 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 makers, it was a great memory… they were not interested at all. 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.” Now, 30 years later, Kutaragi and the rest of the team were obviously right to move ahead with it, but it’s still strange to imagine so many people saying to not do it.
Kutaragi continued, saying that “even within Sony, nobody believed that we would be successful.” At the time, Sony was obviously a tech and notably music oriented business, so the idea that it wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of a still pretty young medium isn’t all that surprising.
Now, of course, Sony is celebrating PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, and it’s done so with a special bundle that sold out immediately, with scalpers flogging their not-very-hard-earned prizes on eBay for ridiculous prices. Happy Birthday, PlayStation!