Stories from 30 years of PlayStation
During EGX in London, PlayStation veterans Chris Deering, David Wilson, Geoff Glendenning, David Ranyard and Masami Kochi took to the stage to share stories from the history of PlayStation.
I hosted the special session and there were some fascinating little insights into working on PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4. To mark the 30th anniversary of the PlayStation brand, here are some of the key anecdotes from that very session.
"I had worked in the industry way before PlayStation at Atari in the mid-80s," began Chris Deering, who ran the PlayStation European business up until the launch of PS3.
"Since that time, Nintendo and Sega were the dominant factions on console. I was happy to get involved with Sony's entry because I thought it would legitimatise console gaming in some countries where it was seen as very downmarket, or even criminal like the arcades down by the train station.
"I knew that the Sony name would legitimise the concept. But what excited me the most was the disc, which would allow us to get games that were selling fast into store a lot faster than eight weeks, which was the time it would take to order new discs from Japan.
"So I was optimistic, but not too optimistic to think it wasn't going to be a fight. What we set out to sell in the first three years of the European division was three million units and 14 million games. It ended up being ten million units and 40 million games. We were very conservative in setting the objectives, but we had the ability to scale up. Then we had a lot of fun with the marketing, and developers coming in with new games and super better looking versions of old games, and that all helped to make the phenomenon happen. And it's been here ever since."
The UK PlayStation team was determined to make this new console a desirable, cool product for adults. And to do so, it tapped into the club and rave scene of the mid 1990s.
"There was this revolution in youth culture at the time," revealed former UK marketing boss Geoff Glendenning. "So we
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