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.
Fittingly for a company that has been at war with other platform holders for two decades, PlayStation was born from a fractious and highly politicised business
relationship that, inevitably, fell apart.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony businessman Ken Kutaragi revealed a new kind of games console that his team had built in partnership with Nintendo. Conceptually, it was a SNES with a CD drive - a simple idea with staggering potential. But the business agreement itself was far more complex, as both companies were divided on how they would split the revenue.
Just one day after Sony's announcement, Nintendo publicly declared that it was building its SNES-CD console exclusively with electronics firm Philips. This was the
first time Sony heard it was no longer in business with Nintendo.
Humiliated and outraged, the corporation's executives decided to not back out of games, and immediately it refocused efforts on building its own console - a 32bit system that would read not cartridges, but Compact Discs.
Fuelled by anger and ambition, Kutaragi immediately brought together a team of Sony engineers who had been working on a special effects engine called System-G (tech that was used to overlay 3D graphics on Android TV shows). The theory was that this group could invent a mass-market version of System-G that could be sold at an affordable price.
To his surprise, Kutaragi faced immediate internal resistance. Many Sony execs, grounded as they were in the corporation's traditions, did not endorse investment in the interactive entertainment sector. Video games were, certainly at that time, perceived by many as a toy business - faddish in concept and only appropriate for children and teens.
Four years later, Kutaragi would have proved these naysayers wrong in the most perfect way imaginable. But in January '92, there was no such means to convince the business. At an investor meeting that month, Kutaragi publicly confessed: "There is no consensus within Sony about why we are engaged in this business".
The politics and in-fighting culminated in an extraordinary meeting in June '92, led by the then-chairman of Sony, Norio Ohga. The majority of the board opposed the console project, but Kutaragi revealed that his team was already working on a CD-ROM-based console that was capable of rendering 3D graphics.
And it was perhaps Ohga's brooding anger over Nintendo's betrayal that saved the project. According to an account of the meeting by Edge, Kutaragi asked Ohga:
"Are you going to sit back and accept what Nintendo did to us?"
The chairman replied. "There's no hope of making further progress with a Nintendo-compatible 16bit machine. Let's chart our own course."
The iPhone is praised for triggering an "indie revolution" by turning bedroom coders into wealthy entrepreneurs. But at its core it is a developer revolution - because the App Store offers all studios the chance to produce content affordably, and update it regularly, with a handsome and hassle-free 70 per cent royalty rate. Unsurprisingly, a whole army of creative talent now marches to the beat of iOS.
It's important to understand how this happened when looking back at why, in 1993, Sony was already gaining serious support from the development industry without even a console to show off.
Nintendo, the biggest player in town, charged infamously high royalty rates, had a certification process that lasted two months, and enjoyed a huge slice of software sales with its own must-have SNES games that drowned out the competition.
PlayStation was born from betrayal and had grown from gutsy decisions, but the eventual triumph shouldn't be remembered merely as a perfect act of revenge.
PlayStation may have shunted Nintendo from market-leader to distant-second, but Sony had achieved something far more special than winning a feud - it had built a whole new market, broke new records and upended the system. PlayStation One changed the game.
According to Mike Gamble, this "does not look like a guy you'd want to mess with"
When asked by Andrew Denton about the plethora of Police Academy films, actor Bobcat Goldthwait said, "We had a lot of unanswered questions". So too, apparently, does Mass Effect 3, as producers Mike Gamble and Casey Hudson recently tweeted some images from the new DLC.
What appears to be a highly armoured Krogan and a casino-like setting are the two images tweeted, with Hudson suggesting that the casino looked like "a nice place for some R&R".
The Mass Effect 3 single-player DLC has always seemed a little odd, being released well after many players would have finished the main storyline, yet R4 Nintendo 3ds Xl set before the end sequences, adding some ludonarrative dissonance to the game.
Little else is known about the new content, except that composer Sam Hulick will be contributing and that actor Seth Green, voice of Normandy pilot Joker, is back on board.
Publisher EA confirmed that Origin was hurtling towards Mac on its official blog, and has launched an alpha testing program ahead of the service's major launch. If you fancy being EA's guinea pig you'd best move quickly, as the open alpha will only be available to a few thousand gamers.
EA is at pains to reassure gamers that Origin for Mac works just like the Windows option, saying, "Just like PC gamers, you'll be able to add non-Origin games to your library, use the Origin In Game overlay, chat with friends across platforms and games, and can continue your saved progress from any Origin-enabled Mac."
If you do manage to get in on the alpha testing phase, you'll get a free copy of Popcap's Bookworm. It's hardly Mass Effect, but hey, at least it's free.
only € 29,90
Origin is EA's attempt to tightly control the way gamers purchase and play games, making players less likely to spend money elsewhere -- in shops or on second-hand titles, for example.
Origin rivals Steam, which is made by Half-Life creator Valve and was made available on Mac in 2010. Valve boss Gabe Newell has been outspoken about modern operating systems, calling Windows 8 a "catastrophe".
Valve is prepping its own console-esque 'Steam Box' for your living room, but don't expect to see that on sale any time soon.
Kaz Hirai, the global chief executive of Sony, has suggested that the next generation PlayStation will not go on sale before Microsoft's Xbox 360 successor.
Asked about console release windows, Hirai told The Times: "why go first when your competitors can look at your specifications and come up with something better?".
It is not known if Hirai's views are shared by executives within the PlayStation business. One senior source told CVG that giving the next Xbox another long head-start would be "ridiculous" considering the ground Microsoft gained by launching the 360 a year before PlayStation 3.
Few in the industry suggest that the next Xbox and PlayStation will be released more than several months apart. It is also likely that both Sony and Microsoft executives have a clear understanding of their competitor's tech already, leaving less reasoning behind Hirai's claim.
Popular Android weather app 1Weather slipped in a pretty major update over the weekend, adding a new user interface along with proper support for tablets. The radar section has been "optimized," you also get better notifications, and there's a new lockscreen widget for those of us running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
Hit the link above to get your update on, or download it for the first time for free.
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