Final Fantasy 7 Was Made for PlayStation Thanks to Sony Music and Booze | Push Square
PlayStation is an enormous brand and one of the biggest names in gaming nowadays, but back when it was just getting started, it was of course a different story. In a recent interview, Sony alumnus Shawn Layden reveals how the team secured Final Fantasy VII for PS1.
He recalls his early days when PlayStation was in its infancy, and how Sony Music was drafted in to help win over developers to make games for this burgeoning platform.
«When they decided they were getting into the game business, they knew they had the technology, the engineers,» Layden says. «But they said 'let's be honest, we sell electronics'. Sony knew that without entertainment DNA, we would not be successful.»
To that end, Sony Music joined the Sony Electronics team, using their sales and client relations experience to help get games onto the PS1. The way they worked was starkly different from the clean-cut engineers working on the console; essentially, their day involved taking publishers and developers out drinking and convincing them to develop games for Sony's machine.
Layden says the Sony Music team would all come in late and hungover, then head out at lunch time to start doing their thing. «We wouldn't see them again for the rest of the day, because Sony Music populated sales, marketing, advertising, publisher relations,» he says. «So those were the guys who would go out with the people at Square and ply them with whiskey until the wee hours of the morning to finally get Final Fantasy VII off of Nintendo and onto PlayStation.»
He describes the announcement of that deal in particular as an «oh my god» moment, giving full credit to the «amazing» Sony Music guys and their «doggedness of just trying to get a deal over the line».
So, PlayStation secured this crucial exclusive thanks to some smooth talking at the bar and, presumably, no small amount of alcohol.
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