Speaker 1: Welcome to text Up, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Uff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And if things sound
Speaker 1: a little differently to you, it's because we are currently
Speaker 1: going through our own social distancing program over with the
Speaker 1: studios in Atlanta, So whenever we can, we're recording from home.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually recording from home today, which means I'm
Speaker 1: on different equipment. Also means that there could be some
Speaker 1: background noises. You might hear my dog Tim bolt at
Speaker 1: some point, or maybe a train or something because I
Speaker 1: live near train tracks. I will try, if I notice,
Speaker 1: to stop speaking so that Tari super producer, can cut
Speaker 1: out anything particularly loud it or distracting, and we can
Speaker 1: just focus on the thing that has remained the most
Speaker 1: consistent throughout the entirety of this show. My low bar
Speaker 1: for content quality. I'm kidding, of course, content is always
Speaker 1: most important for me, so let's get to it. So
Speaker 1: in December two thousand nineteen, the Sony PlayStation console turned
Speaker 1: twenty five years old, and this year that being, we
Speaker 1: anticipate the release of the latest in the line of
Speaker 1: PlayStation's the PlayStation five. In fact, as I was going
Speaker 1: in to record this, the presentation about the PlayStation five
Speaker 1: was just starting to wrap up at what would have
Speaker 1: been the Game's Developer Conference or the Game Developers Conference.
Speaker 1: I pluralized the wrong word there, but that obviously did
Speaker 1: not actually happen in person because of fears of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus and COVID nineteen, but they did it online. So
Speaker 1: I will talk about PlayStation five a little bit later,
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to talk about the history of
Speaker 1: the place station and how the platform has changed over
Speaker 1: the years, and how it's played a big role not
Speaker 1: just in the video game industry, but in tech in general.
Speaker 1: And we'll have a few opportunities to talk about some
Speaker 1: specific types of tech along the way to explain how
Speaker 1: it works. So my guess is this is going to
Speaker 1: take a few episodes, and our story starts with the
Speaker 1: man credited for making the PlayStation a thing, a guy
Speaker 1: who is often referred to as the father of the PlayStation.
Speaker 1: Ken Kutaragi now Kudaragi was born in Tokyo, Japan, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. His family owned a small printing business and
Speaker 1: Kudaragi was an adept student and became interested in mechanical
Speaker 1: systems early on. That was a curiosity that his family encouraged.
Speaker 1: Kudaragi enjoyed building simple things like amplifiers, so you know,
Speaker 1: typical kids stuff. After he progressed through regular schooling, he
Speaker 1: enrolled in an electrical engineering program at Dinki Sushin University.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure I'm butchering these names, and I apologize
Speaker 1: for that. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering
Speaker 1: in nineteen and upon graduation, he joined the Sony Corporation
Speaker 1: as an engineer. According to Kutaragi, he applied to Sony
Speaker 1: specifically because the company had a reputation for giving engineers
Speaker 1: the resources needed to try new things and to be creative,
Speaker 1: which is something he really enjoyed. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: skip ahead to the nineteen eighties. So at this point,
Speaker 1: Kutaragi has been working for the Sony Corporation for several years,
Speaker 1: and now he had a daughter who was into video
Speaker 1: games on the Nintendo Entertainment system. Kutaragi watched his daughter
Speaker 1: playing games and figured that there just might be something
Speaker 1: to this whole video game business. And he saw the
Speaker 1: potential in what was then a niche industry. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time, the Sony Corporation didn't really have any plans
Speaker 1: for making video game consoles or video games in general.
Speaker 1: They were a hardware company and they weren't looking to
Speaker 1: get into that industry. Nintendo began working on the successor
Speaker 1: to the Nintendo Entertainment System or in ne e S,
Speaker 1: also known as the Famicom in other places. Kutaragi would
Speaker 1: make a move that wasn't universally accepted. He made a
Speaker 1: deal with Nintendo to develop the sound chip for the
Speaker 1: Super in ne e S, also known as the SPC
Speaker 1: seven hundred. Now a word about this chip. It's a coprocessor,
Speaker 1: meaning it's similar to a CPU or GPU in some ways.
Speaker 1: The SPC seven hundred is an eight bit chip, meaning
Speaker 1: it can handle a maximum word size of eight bits.
Speaker 1: Now that means that it can handle data that's of
Speaker 1: eight bits or smaller in size. A bit is a
Speaker 1: binary digit. That means it is a digit that can
Speaker 1: have a value of either zero or one. So this
Speaker 1: processor could handle a unit of data that was up
Speaker 1: to eight of those digits in a row. So you
Speaker 1: could have eight zeros, eight ones, or any combination of
Speaker 1: eight of those those two digits. Modern processors can handle
Speaker 1: units that are thirty two or sixty four bits in size,
Speaker 1: and that might not sound like a big deal, but
Speaker 1: you have to remember that you can use just eight
Speaker 1: bits to represent the numbers zero to two hundred fifty five,
Speaker 1: so two hundred fifty six different values. With thirty two bits,
Speaker 1: you can represent more than four billion numbers. With sixty
Speaker 1: four bits, you can represent more than eighteen quintillion numbers.
Speaker 1: So you see very quickly how a larger processor, a
Speaker 1: processor with a larger word size capability, can handle much
Speaker 1: more uh information at once, which in turn means that
Speaker 1: you can handle much more complicated processes. That's what it
Speaker 1: really boils down to for us from a user perspective.
Speaker 1: So an eight bit processor has a limit to the
Speaker 1: amount of information it can, you know, process. Those limitations
Speaker 1: manifest themselves in different ways. So with a video game console,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the stuff like the quality of the
Speaker 1: graphics and the sound creating dedicated chips to handle certain
Speaker 1: processes can push back limitations a little bit because you're
Speaker 1: offloading those those rolls off the CPU and onto a coprocessor.
Speaker 1: But It can also add to some negative stuff, like
Speaker 1: they can add to the amount of heat being generated
Speaker 1: inside the device or how much cost it adds to
Speaker 1: the final product. The goal is to get the most
Speaker 1: bang for your buck from a manufacturing side as well
Speaker 1: as from a consumer side. Now, the processor speed for
Speaker 1: this sound chip was one mega hurts. That means it
Speaker 1: could complete one million cycles per second. Hurts is a cycle,
Speaker 1: so a cycle really is sort of a step and instructions.
Speaker 1: All right, think about a task you might have to do,
Speaker 1: and then break that task down into steps. Some tests
Speaker 1: are so simple they only have one step, right, So
Speaker 1: if the SPC seven hundred had instructions that all just
Speaker 1: required one step, then that chip would be able to
Speaker 1: carry out one million instructions per second. I'm oversimplifying a
Speaker 1: little bit here, but it's just to illustrate a point.
Speaker 1: But now we get to the tricky part. Some instructions
Speaker 1: some tasks require more than one step. So you've got
Speaker 1: a million cycles per second, a million steps per second,
Speaker 1: but you might not be able to carry out one
Speaker 1: million tasks per second because some of those tasks will
Speaker 1: have additional steps. So, in the case of the SPC
Speaker 1: seven hundred, most of the instructions that was carrying out
Speaker 1: had an average of two steps, So really it was
Speaker 1: carrying out about half a million instructions per second, not
Speaker 1: a full million, because again each instruction on average required
Speaker 1: two cycles. So what I just described can actually be
Speaker 1: applied to all sorts of processors, not just the SPC
Speaker 1: seven hundred. So if you've heard terms like the this
Speaker 1: computer's process sessors is three point four gigs. That means
Speaker 1: it's running at a clock speed of three point four
Speaker 1: giga hurts. That means it can do three point four
Speaker 1: billion cycles per second, So it can carry out three
Speaker 1: point four billion steps of instructions every second, but some
Speaker 1: of those instructions might be enormous in the number of
Speaker 1: cycles it requires, so you know, your mileage varies. It
Speaker 1: all depends upon the complexity of what you're running, as
Speaker 1: well as the speed of the processor. If you've heard
Speaker 1: the term overclocking, which more typically applies to computers than consoles,
Speaker 1: that refers to the practice of removing some of the
Speaker 1: safeguards on processors so that they can operate at a
Speaker 1: higher clock speed than what they were originally rated for.
Speaker 1: So maybe a computer manufacturer comes out with a processor
Speaker 1: that they say is rated for three point two giga hurts,
Speaker 1: but you overclock it so it runs at three point
Speaker 1: four giga hurts. So what you've done is you've removed
Speaker 1: some of those limitations. The processors gonna run faster, also hotter,
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll be stable enough so that you get
Speaker 1: extra performance out of it. Now, on a related note,
Speaker 1: some manufacturers actually build in specific limitations on their on
Speaker 1: their chips, not for safety purposes, but so that they
Speaker 1: can sell the exact same chip in different classes. Right,
Speaker 1: So they might have a a limiter on a chip
Speaker 1: that means it won't run faster than three giga hurts,
Speaker 1: and that same chip, but packaged in a different way,
Speaker 1: can run at three point two giga hurts, but the
Speaker 1: limitter has been adjusted. Uh. There are companies that do
Speaker 1: this because it saves cash. It saves money on production.
Speaker 1: You just make the same chip a whole bunch of times,
Speaker 1: you put different limitters on them, and then you can
Speaker 1: sell them for different markets to maximize your profit. But
Speaker 1: it also means that if someone figures out how to
Speaker 1: remove those limitters, they can suddenly get a top of
Speaker 1: the line processor, but for a much lower cost because
Speaker 1: just bought one that had been had the brakes turned on, essentially,
Speaker 1: But let's get back to the SPC seven hundred. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a discussion for a different time. So this
Speaker 1: music chip gave the Super Nintendo a lot more versatility
Speaker 1: when it came to the sounds that it could produce.
Speaker 1: It set the stage for a pretty fierce debate in
Speaker 1: gaming circles that pit the Super Nintendo against the Sega
Speaker 1: Genesis or the Sega Mega Drive. For the record, I
Speaker 1: don't care about this fight. I don't back one side
Speaker 1: versus the other. I actually think both systems have their
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses, so if you program music that caters
Speaker 1: to the strengths of either one, you could make something
Speaker 1: really cool. So the Genesis wasn't great at all the
Speaker 1: things the Super Nintendo was great at, but then the
Speaker 1: same was true the other way. It all depended on
Speaker 1: how you took advantage of the strengths. But back at Sony,
Speaker 1: Kutaragi's supervisors were none too pleased that they had an
Speaker 1: engineer who had taken the initiative to make this deal
Speaker 1: with Nintendo without their approval, and he was allegedly in
Speaker 1: danger of actually getting fired from Sony, but the CEO
Speaker 1: of the company, the CEO of Sony norio Oga, intervened
Speaker 1: and saved Kudaragi's job. He actually said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you finish this. This project and the
Speaker 1: chip was part of what set the Supernintendo apart from
Speaker 1: all the other consoles of that generation. Now, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go so far as to say the sound chip is
Speaker 1: what sealed the deal as far as the Super Nintendo's
Speaker 1: success story goes, but it definitely played apart and the
Speaker 1: success meant that Kutaragi got a little bit more freedom
Speaker 1: to work on things he thought were interesting and potentially profitable.
Speaker 1: Nintendo was really happy too, and with the SPC seven
Speaker 1: hundred setting the foundation, Sony and Nintendo began to explore
Speaker 1: a collaborative project related to the Supernintendo. Sony was pitching
Speaker 1: a CD peripheral for the Nintendo system and Nintendo was
Speaker 1: not super keen on this idea. See over at Nintendo,
Speaker 1: their business model for video game consoles revolved around cartridges,
Speaker 1: not disks. Video game cartridges are pretty interesting. A cartridge
Speaker 1: based video game has the game hard coded on the
Speaker 1: cartridge itself. That is the circuitry of the cartridge is
Speaker 1: the game. When you insert a cartridge into a video
Speaker 1: game console, it connects the cartridges circuit board with a
Speaker 1: sort of motherboard like component in the video game console,
Speaker 1: and that connection allows you to actually have the code
Speaker 1: hard coded on the cartridge run on the computing equipment
Speaker 1: inside the console. This approach has a couple of distinctions
Speaker 1: from stuff like CD ROM based games, and first is
Speaker 1: that a cartridge based game will load really quickly with
Speaker 1: a CD drive. A CD drive has a laser. The
Speaker 1: laser reads the data that's printed on the c D,
Speaker 1: but the laser actually first has to scan to the
Speaker 1: right location on a CD in order to read the
Speaker 1: relevant data. That slows things down to it because the
Speaker 1: laser actually has to move to the right location on
Speaker 1: the disc. So typically with a c D game, the
Speaker 1: computer system or video game console will read the game
Speaker 1: information and store some of it into the system's memory.
Speaker 1: Then the player plays the game and is encountering stuff
Speaker 1: that's stored in the memory of the game system or
Speaker 1: the computer, and there's no delay because it's all right
Speaker 1: there in the random access memory or RAM of the
Speaker 1: console or computer. But when you get far enough that
Speaker 1: you're reaching the boundary of the stuff that was stored
Speaker 1: in RAM. Then the system has to go back to
Speaker 1: the c D and look for new information. It's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I've I've exhausted all the information in this chapter of
Speaker 1: the book. I need to go to the next chapter.
Speaker 1: So at that point you typically would encounter a loading screen.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever played a game where you're opening
Speaker 1: a door and then you get a loading screen, it's
Speaker 1: because you've gone as far as you can within the
Speaker 1: amount of memory of that system, and then you're about
Speaker 1: to move in to a new area and that needs
Speaker 1: to get loaded into the system's memory so that you
Speaker 1: can do that. Cartridge games, though, they send all that
Speaker 1: relevant information to a system much faster, so there's not
Speaker 1: really anly loading screens. The game feels much more responsive
Speaker 1: as a result. From a business standpoint, cartridges have one
Speaker 1: big advantage over compact discs and that it's really hard
Speaker 1: to pirate a cartridge. If you have a computer with
Speaker 1: a couple of c D drives, you know you've got
Speaker 1: a CD burning drive, then you can potentially bootleg games.
Speaker 1: You could just take a legitimate c D read it
Speaker 1: and then copy it to as many blank CDs as
Speaker 1: you want using the burner. Companies typically include features that
Speaker 1: make this harder to do. They have like piracy protection features,
Speaker 1: but typically it's only a matter of time before pirates
Speaker 1: figure out a way around copy protection systems. But with cartridges,
Speaker 1: you can't really do that because you have to manufacture
Speaker 1: the cartridge. You have to hard print the game onto
Speaker 1: the circuitry of the cartridge. You could attempt to make
Speaker 1: a rom like a code copy of the cartridge, but
Speaker 1: then you also have to have an emulator that ends
Speaker 1: up copying the process of whatever system it was going
Speaker 1: to run on. It's it's a complicated thing, and most
Speaker 1: pirates can't really do it, so that's one big advantage.
Speaker 1: But CDs have their own distinct advantages, and a big
Speaker 1: one is that a CD can hold way more information
Speaker 1: than a cartridge can. So cartridge had around the time
Speaker 1: of the Supernintendo had a maximum capacity of around two
Speaker 1: megabytes of memory. C d s can hold more than
Speaker 1: six hundred megabytes of information, so it might load a
Speaker 1: bit more slowly than a cartridge based game, but if
Speaker 1: you had a system with really good memory, then you've
Speaker 1: got the capacity to hold enough data for far more
Speaker 1: sophisticated games. That sophistication might come out as more rich graphics, sound,
Speaker 1: more features, the ability to support some video that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, stuff that cartridges really aren't do very well.
Speaker 1: And c d s are actually way cheaper to manufacture
Speaker 1: than cartridges. So you just start you know, you got
Speaker 1: the code, you just start printing them to c d s.
Speaker 1: You don't have to manufacture the circuit boards over and
Speaker 1: over again, so the process is simpler and you're less
Speaker 1: likely to encounter manufacturing delays. So Sony, a company that
Speaker 1: had been one of the co inventors of the compact
Speaker 1: disc system, the other one being Phillips, pitched this peripheral
Speaker 1: to Nintendo, and at first Nintendo was sort of on board,
Speaker 1: you know, tentatively. Nintendo was feeling a pinch from its
Speaker 1: competitors for the first time since it had debuted the
Speaker 1: original Nintendo And a quick backstory on that. When Nintendo
Speaker 1: was prepping its original Famicom Slash and Into No Entertainment
Speaker 1: System for launch, the home video game industry as a
Speaker 1: whole was in a downward spiral. It was around the
Speaker 1: time of the Great video game Crash of nine three.
Speaker 1: That's when you had a flood of crappy game systems,
Speaker 1: crappy games, some bone headed licensing deals that some other
Speaker 1: factors that all combined in a perfect storm to create
Speaker 1: an unsustainable market for games. And the rise of personal
Speaker 1: computers at the same time complicated matters. So the industry
Speaker 1: came crashing down here in the United States and in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, to a lesser extent in Japan.
Speaker 1: And when Nintendo was getting ready to debut the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment System in these markets, powerhouses that had once dominated
Speaker 1: the scene, companies like Atari and Coliko, were in a shambles.
Speaker 1: So for essentially a full generation of the video game
Speaker 1: console systems, Nintendo reigned supreme and almost unopposed. But that
Speaker 1: was the eight bit era. The Super Nintendo was a
Speaker 1: sixteen bit system, and it wasn't alone. A company called
Speaker 1: NYC had come out with the Turbo Graphics sixteen and
Speaker 1: had even created a CD drive peripheral for that console.
Speaker 1: Is another cartridge based console, but ANBC had already come
Speaker 1: out with a CD based peripheral to add onto the
Speaker 1: base system. This would be the first video game console
Speaker 1: to have a c D rome add on drive, and
Speaker 1: it debuted all the way back in nineteen eight in Japan.
Speaker 1: It also cost six hundred dollars, which was a princely
Speaker 1: sum for a video game peripheral. Even today, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're talking about a VR system, it
Speaker 1: might be around that much, but usually you see peripherals
Speaker 1: that cost less than the base console system, not more.
Speaker 1: And on the horizon was another CD drive peripheral for
Speaker 1: a different system, the Sega Genesis or the Mega Drive.
Speaker 1: They were coming out with a Sega c D peripheral
Speaker 1: and Nintendo was in danger being left behind, so they
Speaker 1: agreed to Sony's proposal. Kudaragi got to work on a
Speaker 1: CD drive that he called the play station to words,
Speaker 1: but in at least one other source, I saw references
Speaker 1: to another name, and that name was Super Disc. Now
Speaker 1: that might have been something that Nintendo was using internally,
Speaker 1: but everywhere else you just see it called the play station.
Speaker 1: And I think you could see where the story is going,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot more crazy stuff to cover. So
Speaker 1: the deal between Sony and Nintendo was never made fully public,
Speaker 1: but there are some things we can glean from various
Speaker 1: interviews and articles, and one of those things is that
Speaker 1: Sony had a really favorable deal. Chances are this isn't
Speaker 1: because of Sony's incredible negotiating power, but more because Nintendo
Speaker 1: executives were highly skeptical that a CD based system would
Speaker 1: actually sell. Nintendo wanted to make sure that the Super
Speaker 1: Nintendo could make substantive claims that it supported technologies similar
Speaker 1: to its competitors, but they were less concerned that those
Speaker 1: technologies actually sold in the market. So Sony was able
Speaker 1: to retain the rights to sell any software on the
Speaker 1: CD based system for Nintendo. I mean, really, they had
Speaker 1: an exclusive deal. They would be the exclusive provider of
Speaker 1: software that would run on this device. So really, what
Speaker 1: the spoils down to is that Sony would be making
Speaker 1: a plug in piece of hardware for the Supernintendo, and
Speaker 1: then Sony would be responsible for making the content that
Speaker 1: would run on that plug in and the Supernintendo would
Speaker 1: sort of act like an agnostic computer, not not that
Speaker 1: different from the way PCs do, and the deal would
Speaker 1: mean that Nintendo would take a portion of the revenue
Speaker 1: from the hardware sales, but Sony would get to keep
Speaker 1: all the software revenue because it was the only one
Speaker 1: involved in that it was the company responsible for making it.
Speaker 1: And Nintendo had nothing to do with it, And if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with Nintendo, you might think, hey, that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of not like them, and you're right. But at
Speaker 1: the time, during the initial discussions, Sony reps were saying
Speaker 1: that the plan was to only make non gaming applications
Speaker 1: for the CD drive peripheral. So you wouldn't be buying
Speaker 1: Sonic The Hedgehog on CD for the Supernintendo because Sony
Speaker 1: would not be making games for the machine. Instead, you
Speaker 1: would buy a CD that had an encyclopedia or something
Speaker 1: like that on it. The seed Drive would give the
Speaker 1: Supernintendo more capabilities, but gaming would not be among them.
Speaker 1: At least that was what the various parties agreed to verbally.
Speaker 1: On paper, however, it would be a different story. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more in just a moment, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Getting back to Nintendo and Sony, the
Speaker 1: contract that was drawn up between these two companies apparently
Speaker 1: didn't expressly forbid Sony from making video games for the
Speaker 1: CD drive. That was what everyone agreed to leading into
Speaker 1: the contract, but the contract itself kind of left that
Speaker 1: stuff out. So legally, Sony could potentially have a way
Speaker 1: to make games, and that would have been a major
Speaker 1: win for Sony. See, Sony would be responsible for that
Speaker 1: hardware and would share revenue with Nintendo for that, but
Speaker 1: on the software side, the video game side, Sony would
Speaker 1: be the sole entity responsible for making those titles, wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to share any money when Nintendo. Sony could potentially
Speaker 1: make CD based games for the Supernintendo and keep all
Speaker 1: the dough plus take advantage of all the advantages of
Speaker 1: a c D system. This would be an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 1: At the time, Sony had no presence in the video
Speaker 1: game industry. They could piggyback off the dominant position Nintendo
Speaker 1: was in, so they would benefit from Nintendo's reputation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Sony would be making the sweet sweet cash from these
Speaker 1: video games. Now, this is all dependent upon if the
Speaker 1: representatives from Sony decided that they wanted to obey the
Speaker 1: letter of the contract but not the spirit of the
Speaker 1: original agreement. And I'm not saying the folks that Sony
Speaker 1: were planning on making an ethically questionable move like that.
Speaker 1: There's no real indication that that was going on. There's
Speaker 1: it's it's possible, maybe even probable, but I don't have
Speaker 1: any proof of that. However, it must have occurred to
Speaker 1: someone at Nintendo that this was a possibility. So Sony
Speaker 1: was in the middle of a massive transformation of its
Speaker 1: own right around this time. Again, this would be like
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties leading into the early nine nineties.
Speaker 1: For decades, Sony had only been in the hardware business,
Speaker 1: but starting in around n seven, they began to acquire
Speaker 1: media companies, music labels, movie studios, that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was emerging from this cocoon of being a
Speaker 1: hardware caterpillar into a media giant butterfly. And beyond movies
Speaker 1: and music and stuff, Sony also created a new subsidiary
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine called Sony image Soft. An image
Speaker 1: soft business was can you guess video games? So over
Speaker 1: in Nintendo. People are starting to get a little uneasy
Speaker 1: about this agreement as they thought about the possibilities further
Speaker 1: down the road. So if Sony held up their end
Speaker 1: of the verbal contract, the worst thing that would happen
Speaker 1: is probably no one would go out and buy the
Speaker 1: peripheral because if you could only run stuff like encyclopedias,
Speaker 1: then who's going to bother spending all that extra money?
Speaker 1: Nintendo would still be able to say that they were
Speaker 1: keeping up with their competitors, and no one would really
Speaker 1: risk anything apart from the sunken cost of building the hardware.
Speaker 1: But if Sony decided it was going to start making
Speaker 1: games for the Super Nintendo, that could cut into Nintendo's business.
Speaker 1: The company making the console might find out that had
Speaker 1: to compete against another company making games for the same system,
Speaker 1: and with the technical advantages of the CD system, that
Speaker 1: could be a strike against Nintendo itself. They could have
Speaker 1: created their own giant killer and public things seemed to
Speaker 1: be progressing as planned. Heck, even after things would fall
Speaker 1: apart and spoiler alert, things are about to fall apart,
Speaker 1: there were still some articles that were published that said
Speaker 1: Sony and Nintendo were moving forward to develop this peripheral. Now.
Speaker 1: To be fair, this was also an era of hard
Speaker 1: copy blishing, so you don't have to go out and
Speaker 1: buy actual physical magazine or newspaper or whatever. See stories
Speaker 1: typically had to be ready weeks in advance. But it
Speaker 1: does show that things fell apart relatively quickly, so we're
Speaker 1: up to nine now. In those days, the Consumer Electronics
Speaker 1: Show or c e S would hold two events each year.
Speaker 1: There's one in the winter in Las Vegas and one
Speaker 1: in the summer in Chicago. So this was in June
Speaker 1: of nineteen in Chicago, Illinois. And there's a story about
Speaker 1: how at a press conference at this c E S
Speaker 1: Nintendo representatives took the stage and announced the development of
Speaker 1: a CD ROM based peripheral. There was just one small
Speaker 1: deviation from the one that everyone had heard about and
Speaker 1: that Kutaragi had been working on for a couple of
Speaker 1: years already. Nintendo was going to make this peripheral with Phillips,
Speaker 1: which was one of Sony's biggest competitors. Remember they were
Speaker 1: the co developer of c D WRONG technology back in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties with Sony. Now, this version of
Speaker 1: the story says that the Sony executives first learned about
Speaker 1: this switcheroo at that press conference that they were sitting
Speaker 1: in the audience and they hear this and they gasp
Speaker 1: because they've suddenly been told that the thing they've been
Speaker 1: working on is getting scrapped in favor of a product
Speaker 1: from a competitor. But as it turns out, that's not
Speaker 1: actually how it all went down. It's almost as bad,
Speaker 1: but not quite that bad. Sony had actually known about
Speaker 1: this change for two whole days leading up to the
Speaker 1: press conference, and that's because there was a reporter for
Speaker 1: the Seattle Times who interviewed people from Nintendo, found out
Speaker 1: about this plan and wrote it about it in an article.
Speaker 1: Just you know, this is a piece of news that
Speaker 1: Nintendo is partnering with Phillips. So the Sony folks had
Speaker 1: known about it for two days. They had even had
Speaker 1: their press event the day before, and at that press
Speaker 1: event they still announced the PlayStation, the Nintendo Sony co
Speaker 1: produced Aroduct And again that's two words, play station, not PlayStation,
Speaker 1: one word with the P ANDD s capitalized. And the
Speaker 1: idea was that Sony was going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: market a version of the Super Nintendo that had a
Speaker 1: CD ROM drive attached to it. Meanwhile, Nintendo and Phillips
Speaker 1: would release their version of a Supernintendo that would include
Speaker 1: a CD ROM that in turn would have enhancements to
Speaker 1: the Super Nintendo's capabilities, and it was all really confusing.
Speaker 1: That version of the PlayStation never made it to market,
Speaker 1: but Sony did build prototypes of it. In fact, one
Speaker 1: collector was able to nab a working model at an
Speaker 1: auction years ago. The auction actually came out of a
Speaker 1: company that had been filing for bankruptcy. There was a
Speaker 1: former Sony CEO who worked at that company, and apparently
Speaker 1: he had a play station prototype, a Sony Nintendo PlayStation
Speaker 1: prototype in his office. I think it most recently sold
Speaker 1: at auction for three hundred sixty thousand dollars, so I
Speaker 1: thought that it was expensive back then. Okay, but the
Speaker 1: story keeps going before we can get to the first
Speaker 1: real PlayStation, and it even gets more crazy. So when
Speaker 1: last we left off, Nintendo announced it was working with
Speaker 1: Phillips to develop a CD ROM peripheral, and the scope
Speaker 1: of that project was actually larger than the Sony deal
Speaker 1: would have been. The Phillips periph role was supposed to
Speaker 1: boost the Super Nintendo computing power, so it's like you
Speaker 1: would get a Super Nintendo one point five with additional
Speaker 1: abilities and graphics and sound thanks to eight more megabytes
Speaker 1: of RAM as a result. So that was a major
Speaker 1: difference between the two because the Sony system was just
Speaker 1: meant to play c D s. Meanwhile, folks at Sony
Speaker 1: and Nintendo were working to repair their relationship after this fallout.
Speaker 1: Nintendo must have been looking at the debut of the
Speaker 1: upcoming Sega c D with anxiety, so quietly Nintendo and
Speaker 1: Sony agreed to work together again. And now the Nintendo
Speaker 1: c D per for roll, the one that was working
Speaker 1: with Phillips, was also going to include Sony as another partner.
Speaker 1: So now you've got Nintendo, Phillips, and Sony working together
Speaker 1: on this thing. In addition, Nintendo would be able to
Speaker 1: make money on Sony c D games sold on the
Speaker 1: system through a licensing agreement, so that work around got
Speaker 1: sewed up as well. The company has made the announcement
Speaker 1: one day before the Sega c D was to come
Speaker 1: out in the United States, which seemed like a pretty
Speaker 1: clear attempt to take some steam out of the engine
Speaker 1: of Sega and buy some time while the companies created
Speaker 1: their own new product. Now, one person who was not
Speaker 1: really behind this whole effort was Kin Kudaragi, the guy
Speaker 1: who had been working on the original Sony Nintendo play station.
Speaker 1: While Kutaragi had pushed for the collaboration back at the beginning,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's decision to dump Sony for Phillips really rubbed him
Speaker 1: the wrong way. He didn't see it as just unjust.
Speaker 1: He thought of it as unforgivable. He was ready to
Speaker 1: move on, and in fact he did, and he turned
Speaker 1: away from Nintendo and he looked toward another possible collaborator,
Speaker 1: and that would be Sega. Sega's Genesis or Mega Drive
Speaker 1: already had its own CD peripheral, the Sega c D.
Speaker 1: That's what Nintendo had been flipping out about. But Sega
Speaker 1: was also looking forward to the next generation of consoles
Speaker 1: and the goal was to develop a console that was
Speaker 1: c D based from the get go. So this was
Speaker 1: sort of in the early stages of them thinking about
Speaker 1: the Sega Saturn, and this was not supposed to be
Speaker 1: a cartridge system with an additional CD drive. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be c D dedicated. Sega was interested in
Speaker 1: collaborating with Sony in order to make this happen. Kim
Speaker 1: Kutaragi would lead the Sony side of things in early discussions,
Speaker 1: and on the Sega side you had the then head
Speaker 1: of Sega's hardware development division that would be the Headeki Sato.
Speaker 1: He was also working on the concept. And after the
Speaker 1: fallout following the original Sony and Nintendo plan, the two
Speaker 1: parties decided it would be best if they didn't publicize
Speaker 1: the project. They want to keep it secret because if
Speaker 1: it doesn't pay off, then nobody loses face. Kutaragi was
Speaker 1: not terribly confident that it was going to work out,
Speaker 1: and he actually expressed his doubts very early on, and
Speaker 1: ultimately Sony made the decision to back out of the
Speaker 1: agreement before it got too far along in the process. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: as many Sony board members were wanting to hedge their
Speaker 1: bets and stick with a relationship with Nintendo because Nintendo
Speaker 1: was a proven success story in video games, Kutaragi was
Speaker 1: growing more and more convinced that Sony can make its
Speaker 1: own video game console and leave everyone else behind. He
Speaker 1: felt that the smart move, both technologically and from a
Speaker 1: business perspective, was to stop trying to hitch a wagon
Speaker 1: to Nintendo's proverbial horses and for Sony to pioneer their
Speaker 1: own path. And while he held very little decision making
Speaker 1: power of his own, he was still on really good
Speaker 1: terms with Sony's CEO, Norio Oga. Kutaragi had impressed Oga
Speaker 1: back in the s PC seven hundred project that was
Speaker 1: the sound system for the original Super Nintendo, and Oga
Speaker 1: must have felt that many of the company's board members
Speaker 1: were being too hesitant to jump into the industry wholeheartedly. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Kutaragi reportedly appealed to Oga's sense of pride. Kutaragi essentially said,
Speaker 1: Nintendo betrayed our company. Are you just gonna sit back
Speaker 1: and let that happen? And Oga's response was, according to reports,
Speaker 1: pretty animated. He got head up about it, and he
Speaker 1: was enraged by Nintendo's actions. So while the board for
Speaker 1: Sony we're pushing for a collaboration, the CEO of Sony
Speaker 1: secretly gave Kutaragi the authority to develop Sony's own video
Speaker 1: game console. Meanwhile, Nintendo was making some design changes to
Speaker 1: the planned hardware that they were going to debut, this
Speaker 1: Super Nintendo with CD ROM drive. They kept changing things
Speaker 1: and that was causing delays. And you can kind of
Speaker 1: think of this as a type of feature creep. That's
Speaker 1: when designers plan out a product, but then they say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be cool if this vacuum cleaner
Speaker 1: could also I don't know, brush your teeth or whatever.
Speaker 1: Then some poor team of engineers has to figure out
Speaker 1: how to actually make that work. And then they have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to make it work more cheaply
Speaker 1: so that the product can actually sell the price where
Speaker 1: people are going to buy it. All of this takes time,
Speaker 1: and it makes you slip deadlines. With video game hardware,
Speaker 1: it gets trickier because as delays happened, other companies are
Speaker 1: still developing their technologies. They start to come out with
Speaker 1: more advanced consoles. So you might be working on something
Speaker 1: and then you think, oh, wouldn't it be cool if
Speaker 1: it also did this other thing. That sets you back
Speaker 1: as you try and make it do this other thing.
Speaker 1: Suddenly someone else comes out with an even better console,
Speaker 1: and you're even further behind than you were before, and
Speaker 1: so by the time you actually debut your product, it's
Speaker 1: already obsolete. So then you have to go back to
Speaker 1: your drawing board, soup up your hardware, pushback production time further.
Speaker 1: And this happens in tech all the time, not just
Speaker 1: in the video game where world, but it does happen
Speaker 1: in the video game world a lot. In fact, that
Speaker 1: it even happens on the software side. You might remember
Speaker 1: the saga of the video game Duke Nukem Forever, which
Speaker 1: was in development and vaporware for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: as the company behind it kept delaying the production of
Speaker 1: the game. As game engines got better and better, they
Speaker 1: kept saying, Oh, we can make it even better than
Speaker 1: it was, but meant having to start all over multiple times. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the Nintendo and Sony saga, the delays were
Speaker 1: the doom of the nes Sony Phillips c D system.
Speaker 1: It never came out. Nintendo was already developing the next
Speaker 1: generation of its video game consoles that would be the
Speaker 1: Nintendo sixty four. The sixty four would outperform the old
Speaker 1: Super Nintendo. It just seemed like it was a losing
Speaker 1: proposition to try and boost an old piece of hardware
Speaker 1: beyond its lifespan. Now, there was no official acknowledgement regarding
Speaker 1: the cancelation of the project, but Nintendo effectively canceled it.
Speaker 1: It kind of ghosted on the whole thing. I've never
Speaker 1: seen any verified reports that the company has actually produced
Speaker 1: any working prototypes of this proposed variation of the Superintendo.
Speaker 1: It turned out those uh Sony board members who were
Speaker 1: determined to play it safe, we're actually backing the wrong
Speaker 1: horse all along. Now I say that with the benefit
Speaker 1: of hindsight, but back in the day, I probably would
Speaker 1: have thought that they were making the responsible call because
Speaker 1: Nintendo had a reputation and Sony had an unproven ability
Speaker 1: to make its own stand in the video game console market.
Speaker 1: All of that means that Ken Kutaragi's somewhat clandestine project
Speaker 1: to develop a stand alone Sony PlayStation console would end
Speaker 1: up being the winning strategy. I'll explain more in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but first let's take another quick break. Kudaragi
Speaker 1: and his team went to work building out Sony's own
Speaker 1: video game console. They already had a good amount of
Speaker 1: experience due to working on the Nintendo projects. They laid
Speaker 1: out what they wanted the console to be, and during
Speaker 1: the development process, Nintendo executives learned about what was going
Speaker 1: on at Sony, and they knew or suspected that at
Speaker 1: least some of the components the company was using to
Speaker 1: make its first game console were originally developed for the
Speaker 1: scrapped Nintendo Sony Super Nintendo peripheral. So Nintendo tried to
Speaker 1: take legal action to stop Sony from developing the PlayStation
Speaker 1: because they were arguing the original bones for that system
Speaker 1: were made as part of a partnership deal with Nintendo,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the courts decided against Nintendo and found in
Speaker 1: favor of Sony, so they got to go ahead. So
Speaker 1: despite the technical, legal, political, from an internal Sony perspective,
Speaker 1: and market challenges, the PlayStation team was actually able to
Speaker 1: build the gaming device they had in mind after years
Speaker 1: of struggle, and this was the Sony PlayStation, or as
Speaker 1: we refer to it today, the PS one. Of course,
Speaker 1: back then, we didn't call it the PS one because
Speaker 1: no one knew that there was ever going to be
Speaker 1: a PS two. You don't call World War one world
Speaker 1: War one when it's happening, because that means you suspect
Speaker 1: there will be a World War two, and the optimist says,
Speaker 1: let's hope that doesn't happen. I mean, it happened, but
Speaker 1: we hoped it wouldn't happen. The first PlayStation had a
Speaker 1: thirty two bit CPU. Now remember a thirty two bit
Speaker 1: system isn't just twice as powerful as a sixteen bit system,
Speaker 1: it's way more than that. So a sixteen bit number
Speaker 1: has two to the power of sixteen different possible values, right,
Speaker 1: because a bit can have one of two values, it's
Speaker 1: either zero or it's of one. And when you have
Speaker 1: sixteen of them together, that means you have two to
Speaker 1: the power of sixteen different combinations of those values. That
Speaker 1: actually means that a sixteen bit integer can store sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand, three hundred fifty six distinct values. Remember eight
Speaker 1: bit was two hundred fifty five zero to two fifty
Speaker 1: five two ft six total sixteen is six fifty six.
Speaker 1: You go to thirty two bit has two to the
Speaker 1: power of thirty two different possible values, which means a
Speaker 1: thirty two bit integer can store more than four billion
Speaker 1: distinct values. So it's an enormous jump in power. The
Speaker 1: first PlayStation had sixteen megabits or if you prefer, you know,
Speaker 1: two megabytes of RAM. Remember a bite is eight bits,
Speaker 1: so sixteen megabits of RAM or random access memory. That's
Speaker 1: the type of memory that the computer uses to store
Speaker 1: data for quick retrieval. So typically speaking, if your computer
Speaker 1: has more RAM, you can store more information in that
Speaker 1: memory and you get faster access out of it, and
Speaker 1: so to you, it seems like it translates into just
Speaker 1: faster response with your computer and it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: pull from the hard disc as frequently. The system also
Speaker 1: had eight megabits or one byte of v RAM that's
Speaker 1: video RAM. I'm guessing you guys can figure out what
Speaker 1: v RAM is meant to do. It had its own
Speaker 1: g FX graphics processing unit. It supported twenty four channels
Speaker 1: of sound with its own dedicated four megabits of sound
Speaker 1: RAM with a sampling frequency of forty four point one.
Speaker 1: Killer hurts. I've talked about sampling frequencies on other episodes.
Speaker 1: I'd rather not jump off topic to talk about it
Speaker 1: right now, so I'm going to ignore this diversion, which
Speaker 1: is very unlike me and Soldier on. It could also
Speaker 1: support up to four thousand sprites, not the drink. Sprites
Speaker 1: in computer graphics are two dimensional bit maps. Uh. They're
Speaker 1: very important, especially in the old arcade scene, and they
Speaker 1: integrate into larger scenes. You can kind of think of
Speaker 1: them as objects in this context. The PlayStation could create
Speaker 1: three D rendered graphics. In fact, it was intended to
Speaker 1: do so. Now those three D rendered graphics are fairly
Speaker 1: primitive by today's standards, but the PlayStation could also support
Speaker 1: full ocean video. Guys, if you've never explored the world
Speaker 1: of full motion video or fm V games, you gotta
Speaker 1: do some searches on YouTube. The industry was more than
Speaker 1: a little puzzled about how they might be able to
Speaker 1: use live action video to enhance video games. The results
Speaker 1: range from interesting, maybe a little limited, but you can
Speaker 1: see where they were going and you can appreciate their
Speaker 1: creativity all the way down to the cringing lee hilarious.
Speaker 1: There's a Tim Curry Frankenstein game that is out of
Speaker 1: this world as far as cringe goes. I love it
Speaker 1: so much. So there are many terrible performances in FMV games,
Speaker 1: and it is glorious anyway. These capabilities of the system
Speaker 1: set the PlayStation apart from stuff like Nintendo's sixty four system.
Speaker 1: One thing the original PlayStation didn't have was an internal
Speaker 1: storage drive. Now this was not unusual in early consoles.
Speaker 1: I mean in the old days, there was no way
Speaker 1: to say of your progress in a game at all.
Speaker 1: You would play until you ran out of time or
Speaker 1: energy or patients or whatever. Maybe your mom told you
Speaker 1: to get off the video game system and turn off
Speaker 1: the TV. And then if you did turn off the system,
Speaker 1: everything would go away as far as the game is concerned.
Speaker 1: The next time you turn everything on, you would have
Speaker 1: to start over from the very beginning. There was no
Speaker 1: saving your progress. The PlayStation was no different. So if
Speaker 1: you did want to save your progress, you have to
Speaker 1: invest in some memory cards. The memory cards were these
Speaker 1: plastic cards that you could slot into the game system.
Speaker 1: They had these little slots that were just above the
Speaker 1: two game controller reports on the front of the console.
Speaker 1: Each memory card could hold on eight whole kilobytes of data.
Speaker 1: That's um, that's not very much. Speaking of controllers, gamers
Speaker 1: are probably pretty familiar with the dual Shock controller, but
Speaker 1: that would actually come out later several years after the
Speaker 1: PlayStation first day. You the duel Shock as stuff on it,
Speaker 1: like two thumbsticks, but the original PlayStation one controller did
Speaker 1: not have thumbsticks. It had four direction buttons up, down, left,
Speaker 1: and right, and then had the four round buttons designated
Speaker 1: with colorful shapes. There's the green triangle at the top,
Speaker 1: the red circle at the right, the blue x at
Speaker 1: the bottom, and the peak square on the left. And
Speaker 1: since I'm more of an Xbox gamer, I do own
Speaker 1: a PS four, but I play more games on the
Speaker 1: Xbox and the PS four. Going from an Xbox controller
Speaker 1: to a PlayStation controller means that for the first half
Speaker 1: hour or so, I just keep hitting the wrong buttons.
Speaker 1: So that's a me problem. That's not a problem with
Speaker 1: the system. That's a problem with with me. Jonathan Kutaragi's
Speaker 1: team had the PlayStation ready to launch in Japan in December.
Speaker 1: The company would wait almost a year before launching it
Speaker 1: in North America, and the company also aimed to launch
Speaker 1: the PlayStation one week after the project did launch date
Speaker 1: of the Sega Saturn console to takes some again some
Speaker 1: of the steam out of the engines of of Sega,
Speaker 1: and while the team was hard at work on the hardware,
Speaker 1: there was a question about the games themselves. At this stage,
Speaker 1: Sony did not have an internal video game development team
Speaker 1: for the PlayStation. They had a video game unit, but
Speaker 1: that was focused more on computer games. At the time,
Speaker 1: Nintendo and Sega had several other companies. All had first
Speaker 1: party developers working for them, which meant their consoles were
Speaker 1: guaranteed to have launch titles ready to go. Now, there's
Speaker 1: not a guarantee on the quality of those launch titles,
Speaker 1: but some companies like Nintendo generally do pretty well with that.
Speaker 1: Sony was more dependent upon relationships with third party developers
Speaker 1: other companies that would make games to run on the system.
Speaker 1: Some of that was actually pretty easy for Sony to do.
Speaker 1: Some of those relationships were easy to form, largely thanks
Speaker 1: to Nintendo. See, there were companies that were sort of
Speaker 1: jerked around when Nintendo changed policies about whether or not
Speaker 1: it was ever going to release a CD based system.
Speaker 1: For example, the famous video game developers Square, which was
Speaker 1: responsible and is responsible for the insanely popular Final Fantasy series,
Speaker 1: that was one of the companies that got kind of
Speaker 1: burnt by Nintendo. They had dedicated resources to creating titles
Speaker 1: for a system that never saw the light of day,
Speaker 1: so they were receptive to Sony's pitch to make games
Speaker 1: for that system instead. Now, one monkey wrench in that
Speaker 1: particular approach came from inside Sony Computer Entertainment America or
Speaker 1: s c e A. This was a North American branch
Speaker 1: of the company that would oversee operations in sales in
Speaker 1: North America. So the thought was that markets in North
Speaker 1: America and the market in say, Japan, are very different,
Speaker 1: and thus you need different strategies to make products a
Speaker 1: success in their respective regions. The general philosophy being certain
Speaker 1: games might sell really well in one place, but they're
Speaker 1: never gonna go over well in another. So games that
Speaker 1: could do incredibly well in Japan we're seen as being
Speaker 1: completely unmarketable in the United States. Well, the head of
Speaker 1: s c e A at that time as PlayStation was
Speaker 1: getting ready to launch was a guy named Bernie Stoller,
Speaker 1: and Stoller had his own requirement as far as game
Speaker 1: development went for the PlayStation, so the PlayStation could run
Speaker 1: games with three D rendered graphics, which is obviously one
Speaker 1: D better than two D graphics, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: in the name. So Stiller put in place a policy
Speaker 1: no North American games would feature two D graphics. All
Speaker 1: new games needed to be three D. This makes me
Speaker 1: think of there was a time at Disney when Pixar
Speaker 1: films were doing really well, where you had executives at
Speaker 1: Disney suggests that perhaps all Disney films should move to
Speaker 1: computer animation, that hand drawn animation was no longer popular. Uh,
Speaker 1: and at computer animation was just superior from a market standpoint.
Speaker 1: It's kind of not really taking reality into account. So
Speaker 1: just as that wasn't true that hand drawn animation can
Speaker 1: have a place, it's the story that's really important, so
Speaker 1: is the same for video games. Three D is not
Speaker 1: inherently better than two D. It's also in the execution
Speaker 1: and what the gameplay is and the connection to the gamer,
Speaker 1: so that meant some games like Final Fantasy seven would
Speaker 1: not have a place in the North American market initially,
Speaker 1: at least not as long as Stolen was in charge. Now,
Speaker 1: he did leave Sony about a year after the launch
Speaker 1: of the PlayStation in the United States, and then he
Speaker 1: went to work for Drumroll Please Sega as president and
Speaker 1: chief operating officer. He restructured the company, which was rough
Speaker 1: had about three people laid off as a result, and
Speaker 1: he was trying to prepare the company for the launch
Speaker 1: of the Sega Dreamcast. Now you may have heard of
Speaker 1: the Dreamcast, but seeing as there's no Dreamcast five coming
Speaker 1: out this year, that pretty much tells you how everything
Speaker 1: went down. Let's get back to Sony. Even if a
Speaker 1: video game developer had not been burned by Nintendo, a
Speaker 1: lot of them were eager to try to create games
Speaker 1: for the Sony PlayStation. That console was clearly more powerful
Speaker 1: and more capable than other systems that were currently on
Speaker 1: the market, and so Sony began to create partnerships with
Speaker 1: various developers, and they shared information about the PlayStation's design
Speaker 1: so the developers could optimize their code to run on
Speaker 1: a PlayStation. Once it was ready to go, Sony also
Speaker 1: would send out developer versions of the console. So these
Speaker 1: were working models that weren't yet in the final consumer format,
Speaker 1: but they were designed so that game developers could test
Speaker 1: their games make sure that they actually ran on the hardware.
Speaker 1: The pre production work paid off, and the PlayStation would
Speaker 1: launch with a decent library of titles right from the start. Now,
Speaker 1: the launch titles for the PS one in North America
Speaker 1: included games like Battle Arena to Shinden, which was one
Speaker 1: of the first, if not the actual first fighting game
Speaker 1: to have both three D rendered characters wielding weapons and
Speaker 1: capable of side stepping, meaning they could move deeper or
Speaker 1: more shallower in the field of view. So typically in
Speaker 1: these sort of fighting games, you can move left or
Speaker 1: right across the screen, but you can't move closer to
Speaker 1: our further from the view of the person playing. Then
Speaker 1: there was ESPN Extreme Games, because this was in the
Speaker 1: nineties and back then everything had to be extreme. There
Speaker 1: was a first person shooter called Kiliak the DNA Imperative,
Speaker 1: which I had never even heard of until I did
Speaker 1: the research for this episode. There was the incredibly popular
Speaker 1: NBA Jam Tournament edition There was a game called Ridge Racer,
Speaker 1: another popular game in that lineup. There was also a
Speaker 1: street fighter game in that lineup, although it was Fighter
Speaker 1: the movie addition, so you know, take that with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt. It also had Raymond that was another
Speaker 1: launch title, and there were several others as well. After
Speaker 1: Stoller left, the PlayStation's library in North America began to
Speaker 1: include titles like Final Fantasy seven Thiss good thing too,
Speaker 1: because that title would become the second most popular PlayStation
Speaker 1: one title of all times, selling ten million units. The
Speaker 1: other big one was Grand Tarismo, a racing game. The console,
Speaker 1: already enjoying some early success, was on the road to
Speaker 1: making it big. Now we'll continue our story of the
Speaker 1: PlayStation and the line of PlayStation consoles in our next episode.
Speaker 1: This one focused a lot on the prehistory of the console,
Speaker 1: but future episodes are going to look more closely at
Speaker 1: the consoles themselves, the game franchises that exist thanks to
Speaker 1: the PlayStation line, and the broader impact on culture and society.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for a few sure episodes
Speaker 1: of tech stuff, whether it's a company uh specific technology,
Speaker 1: of personality in tech, maybe it's just a concept intact
Speaker 1: that you want to learn more about, let me know,
Speaker 1: send me a message. You can send it on Twitter
Speaker 1: or Facebook that My handle at both of those is
Speaker 1: text stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.