Speaker 1: Welcome to text Time, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 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 today we are
Speaker 1: going to pick up where we left off with the
Speaker 1: episode about the birth of the PlayStation. And here is
Speaker 1: the story so far. I covered in that recent episode
Speaker 1: how Ken Kutaragi, the so called father of the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: had to develop Sony's first video game console essentially out
Speaker 1: of view of the company's board members, who are more
Speaker 1: keen on pursuing a collaboration with Nintendo at the time.
Speaker 1: But the Nintendo partnership never produced a consumer product, and
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if there were ever any working
Speaker 1: prototypes that came out of this project, because Nintendo kind
Speaker 1: of kill hold it all off without ever making an
Speaker 1: official announcement about the program being canceled. Kutaragi was confident
Speaker 1: that Sony could build a CD ROM based video game
Speaker 1: system as opposed to Nintendo's cartridge based system that would
Speaker 1: not just compete, but would outperform the competition. Now, it
Speaker 1: almost wasn't called the PlayStation, by the way, Kutaragi wanted
Speaker 1: to call it that. In fact, that was the name
Speaker 1: of the proposed Nintendo and Sony peripheral for the Supernintendo,
Speaker 1: though at that time that version of the PlayStation was
Speaker 1: two words play station, and Kutaragi wanted to create a
Speaker 1: game console called PlayStation one word big P big S.
Speaker 1: When Sony CEO Norrio Oga gave the thumbs up, it
Speaker 1: was going to be called PlayStation. Sony had already even
Speaker 1: registered the name. Everything was ready to go, but as
Speaker 1: a courtesy, they brought the idea to the founder of Sony,
Speaker 1: Akio Morita. This is sort of a very traditional approach
Speaker 1: in jeb and Theese business. It was a sign of
Speaker 1: respect to the founder. Now, Marita loved the idea of
Speaker 1: the video game console. He liked the idea of getting
Speaker 1: into that industry, and everything was great, except he hated
Speaker 1: the name, and he said that they should change it.
Speaker 1: So reluctantly they began to search for a new name,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of months later, Marita sadly suffered
Speaker 1: a severe stroke and it was bad enough to keep
Speaker 1: him from returning to work. The team hadn't found a
Speaker 1: new name at that point, and everything was already ready
Speaker 1: to go under the PlayStation name so Oga. The CEO
Speaker 1: quietly kind of gave the go ahead for them to
Speaker 1: stick with that name after all. One thing I didn't
Speaker 1: really cover in the previous episode was how Kutaragi came
Speaker 1: across to his superiors and his subordinates. Stubborn would probably
Speaker 1: be a good adjective to use, traditional another good adjective,
Speaker 1: aggressive is another one. Shigeyo Maruyama said in interviews that
Speaker 1: while he was a manager at the time and Kutaragi
Speaker 1: was an engineer at the time, Kutaragi would sometimes treat
Speaker 1: Shigeyo like he was the subordinate. At one point, angry
Speaker 1: that Shigeo wasn't doing whatever it was that Kutaragi wanted done,
Speaker 1: Kutaragi said that Shigeo should quit, and according to Shigeyo,
Speaker 1: who seemed pretty good natured about the whole thing, Kutaragi
Speaker 1: was like a temperamental artist who didn't believe in apologizing
Speaker 1: even if he knew he was the one in the wrong.
Speaker 1: So he's definitely a visionary, but he also sounds like
Speaker 1: the kind of guy I wouldn't really want to work with.
Speaker 1: Kutaragi also encountered issues when he tried to work with
Speaker 1: his counterparts in the United States. He was in charge
Speaker 1: of the Sony PlayStation project, a huge deal. However, that
Speaker 1: wasn't reflected in his official title, which was more or
Speaker 1: less like assistant manager. The business hierarchy in Japan is
Speaker 1: really rigid. Companies have strict rules in place that limit
Speaker 1: when someone could be even eligible to apply for a
Speaker 1: position with a larger title. So while Kutaragi was leading
Speaker 1: the PlayStation efforts and his decisions were the ones that
Speaker 1: completely guided the development of that console, his title was
Speaker 1: translated into assistant manager essentially, and that meant that his
Speaker 1: US counterparts weren't really listening to him. I mean, why
Speaker 1: would they. They were all executives, right, They had big,
Speaker 1: important titles. And now I should add that does not
Speaker 1: necessarily reflect a person's capability, or their wisdom, or their
Speaker 1: knowledge or anything like that. But titles are sometimes seen
Speaker 1: as more important than those qualities because because humans are
Speaker 1: silly creatures I guess anyway, Kutaragi would eventually resort to
Speaker 1: using more grandiose titles in English on his business cards
Speaker 1: because as US counterparts couldn't read his real title, which
Speaker 1: was printed in Japanese, so his real title would say
Speaker 1: assistant manager in Japanese, but he might have senior vice
Speaker 1: president or something listed as his title in English. And
Speaker 1: I include this story simply because it points out a
Speaker 1: cultural divide between Japan and the United States, and it's
Speaker 1: one that a lot of people have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to work around and through whenever they're producing collaborative projects.
Speaker 1: And it's not you know, it's not an outlier. This
Speaker 1: is something that lots of companies deal with, but I
Speaker 1: thought it was an interesting story. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the PlayStation would debut at the very first Electronic Entertainment
Speaker 1: Expo or E three, way back in nine at E
Speaker 1: three number one. Here in twenty the latest E three
Speaker 1: has been canceled, and there's a big question mark over
Speaker 1: the future of the the the event and whether or
Speaker 1: not it will make a return in twenty one, we
Speaker 1: don't know. But at three, the PlayStation made a huge impact,
Speaker 1: and it didn't hurt that it was up against some
Speaker 1: some kind of shaky competition. You had the extreme misfire
Speaker 1: on Nintendo's part, for example, the much maligned Virtual Boy.
Speaker 1: So the buzz about the PlayStation was really powerful leading
Speaker 1: up to its launch in the United States, it already
Speaker 1: launched in Japan at that point. Now these days, we'd
Speaker 1: refer to that first PlayStation as being one of the
Speaker 1: consoles in the fifth generation of home video game consoles,
Speaker 1: and a word on that. It's a bit tricky to
Speaker 1: apply terms like generation to video game consoles, largely because
Speaker 1: each company has its own release dates and some technologies
Speaker 1: overlapped between generations. But generally speaking, the generation designation tends
Speaker 1: to apply to the capabilities of the consoles. The first
Speaker 1: generation included dedicated game systems like the Odyssey, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff where you could play Pong, and it was hard
Speaker 1: coded on the hardware itself. In other words, you couldn't
Speaker 1: play other games. It was literally the game that was
Speaker 1: coded onto the circuitry of the console. The second generation
Speaker 1: of video game consoles included slightly more sophisticated game systems
Speaker 1: like the at twenty. These are game systems that could
Speaker 1: accept things like cartridges, so you weren't stuck with that
Speaker 1: single title. You could actually switch that out by by
Speaker 1: pulling the cartridge out and putting a different cartridge. In
Speaker 1: the original Nintendo Entertainment System, or the Famicom as it
Speaker 1: was known, in Japan would belong to the third generation
Speaker 1: of video game consoles that's also known as the eight
Speaker 1: bit era, and I talked about eight bit and sixteen
Speaker 1: bit uh in the last episode, the Super Nintendo and
Speaker 1: the consoles like the Turbographics sixteen and Sega Genesis. In
Speaker 1: other words, the sixteen bit systems were in the fourth generation.
Speaker 1: And now that brings us up to the fifth generation
Speaker 1: where the PlayStation would belong, and that was the thirty
Speaker 1: two bit era. Other consoles that belonged to that same
Speaker 1: generation included the Nintendo sixty four and the Sega Saturn. Now.
Speaker 1: I mentioned at the end of the previous PlayStation episode
Speaker 1: that in North America and Particul Killer there was a
Speaker 1: heavy emphasis on three D graphics. In general, the evolution
Speaker 1: into the era of three D graphics was one of
Speaker 1: the defining features for the fifth generation of video game
Speaker 1: consoles as a whole. Some systems, like the PlayStation were
Speaker 1: in better shape when it came to a three D
Speaker 1: graphics option. The CD ROM drive allowed game developers to
Speaker 1: make bigger, more complicated games than they could on Nintendo's
Speaker 1: old cartridge based sixty four. Now, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: that does not necessarily mean that games were automatically better
Speaker 1: on one system versus the other. I owned both the
Speaker 1: PS one and an in sixty four, and in general
Speaker 1: I preferred the Nintendo console. But to be fair, I
Speaker 1: didn't own a ton of games on either system, so
Speaker 1: my experience was really limited. I did have some killer
Speaker 1: games on the n sixty four, like Golden I and
Speaker 1: some w c W and at the time old WWF
Speaker 1: wrestling games. Also the extremely cheeky Conquer is Bad for day.
Speaker 1: Things like that and those won me over over the PlayStation.
Speaker 1: But again, I didn't have a lot of PlayStation titles,
Speaker 1: and I was definitely in the minority on this one. Now,
Speaker 1: let me be clear, the PlayStation has no shortage of
Speaker 1: great games. Far from it. It has an enormous game library,
Speaker 1: and that's thanks in large part to Sony's general practice
Speaker 1: of supporting a video game console even into the life
Speaker 1: cycle of its successor. I'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: this episode. So it's not unusual to find new game
Speaker 1: titles coming out for a console that is a generation
Speaker 1: behind the most current console on the market. But I'm
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. One interesting behind the scenes fact
Speaker 1: about the PlayStation is how Sony CEO norio Oga, decided
Speaker 1: to position it from a company standpoint, like what division
Speaker 1: would it actually be produced under. He was worried that
Speaker 1: if the Sony Corporation was the sole producer of this,
Speaker 1: if it was under that label, then it wouldn't do
Speaker 1: very well because Sony wasn't known for video games, so
Speaker 1: he was worried that no one would pay attention. He
Speaker 1: actually designated it as a joint venture between the Sony
Speaker 1: Corporation that is the main brand, and Sony Music. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess the thing did have a CD ROM drive
Speaker 1: so you could play music CD s on it, so
Speaker 1: I suppose that's close enough. One huge advantage Sony had
Speaker 1: over Nintendo was because of Nintendo's stubborn insistence on sticking
Speaker 1: with that cartridge format. Well, cartridge based games loaded faster,
Speaker 1: and they were harder to pirate. They were also harder
Speaker 1: to produce, and they were a pain and that took
Speaker 1: us to make. In other words, if you were a developer.
Speaker 1: But developing a game for a CD ROM based system
Speaker 1: simplified things a lot, and so Sony attracted way more
Speaker 1: third party developers to its platform. Nintendo was producing amazing
Speaker 1: first party and second party content, but found it more
Speaker 1: challenging to get third party companies to sign on. This
Speaker 1: also meant that the Sony PlayStation would serve as the
Speaker 1: foundation for some exclusive agreements between Sony and various video
Speaker 1: game developers, or at least specific franchises, and those franchises
Speaker 1: would help define the console's place in video game history.
Speaker 1: That place, by the way, is pretty high up there.
Speaker 1: Oh and Sony also acquired a game developer company of
Speaker 1: its own. It was a game company called Psygnosis, which
Speaker 1: was mostly famous for a series of games called Lemmings,
Speaker 1: where you try and lead a group of limings across
Speaker 1: a dangerous environment, and you assign different abilities to lemmings
Speaker 1: in order to get as many of them across as possible.
Speaker 1: It's an adorable strategy game and I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: check it out if you've never played a Limmings game,
Speaker 1: there's tons of them out there anyway. Psygnosis would become
Speaker 1: Sony Interactive Entertainment, which would become the internal video game
Speaker 1: developer division at Sony. Now the PlayStation would go on
Speaker 1: to become the top selling console from the fifth generation
Speaker 1: of consoles. It's sold more than three hundred thousand units
Speaker 1: in the first thirty days, with a nine scent sell
Speaker 1: through rate, meaning that Sony was selling nearly all of
Speaker 1: its inventory in stock. In fact, for a while, it
Speaker 1: held the title as the top selling video game console
Speaker 1: of all time, and it was the first to hit
Speaker 1: one hundred million units sold, which isn't bad for a
Speaker 1: clandestine project that initially did not have the support of
Speaker 1: the company's board of directors. Kutaragi's ambition was not limited
Speaker 1: to creating a video game console, though. He told Shuji Utsumi,
Speaker 1: one of the engineers who worked on the design of
Speaker 1: the PlayStation, that his ultimate goal was to create not
Speaker 1: just a video game system, but an entire operating system
Speaker 1: upon which all sorts of stuff could be built. So
Speaker 1: he saw the console as a type of specialized computer,
Speaker 1: and that developing for the console should be similar to
Speaker 1: developing for other personal computers. He said he wanted the
Speaker 1: PlayStation to be more modeled after Microsoft's approach to business
Speaker 1: rather than Nintendo's or Sega's, And keep in mind Microsoft
Speaker 1: didn't have a console at this point, so he's really
Speaker 1: talking about the productivity approach. One thing that Sony did
Speaker 1: and that a lot of companies do, was that they
Speaker 1: region locked video game consoles, So this means Sony would
Speaker 1: include some firmware in region specific models of the PlayStation,
Speaker 1: So a Japanese PlayStation console would have this coded into
Speaker 1: the firmware, and a United States console would have a
Speaker 1: different region code coded into its hardware, and that would
Speaker 1: mean that you could only play the games that were
Speaker 1: produced and marketed for the region you were in, or
Speaker 1: for the region that the console was from, but not
Speaker 1: for other regions. So if you were in the US
Speaker 1: and you bought a US PlayStation, you couldn't just get
Speaker 1: a copy of a Japanese title and slap it into
Speaker 1: your con soul and have it work. The games were
Speaker 1: region locked, so you'd be forced to either wait for
Speaker 1: the company to eventually produce an American localized version of
Speaker 1: whatever game you wanted to play, which might not ever happen,
Speaker 1: or give up. And this comes down to companies making
Speaker 1: bets on which games are going to work well within
Speaker 1: certain regions, and the prevailing philosophy is that due to
Speaker 1: cultural differences, some titles just will not appeal to certain audiences,
Speaker 1: so it's not worth the trouble to go through the
Speaker 1: development and localization to make a version for that region.
Speaker 1: Why do it if you're just gonna waste money. No
Speaker 1: one's going to play it anyway. That's the that's the philosophy.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of Japanese RPG or role
Speaker 1: playing games that fall into that category, and there is
Speaker 1: a healthy fan base for Japanese RPGs that are outside
Speaker 1: of Japan. A lot of people outside Japan love those
Speaker 1: games and so they find it very frustrating when these
Speaker 1: games are region locked. Now, my manufacturers of cartridge based
Speaker 1: systems could use the physical connectors between a cartridge and
Speaker 1: a console to do this, so they can make consoles
Speaker 1: for one region, and the cartridges for that one region
Speaker 1: a specific size that will not fit into the consoles
Speaker 1: that are made for another region. So if you've got
Speaker 1: a Japanese cartridge for a US console, you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be able to physically plug it in because they wouldn't
Speaker 1: match up. So that was something that cartridge makers could do.
Speaker 1: But c d s are universal, right, they can fit
Speaker 1: into any CD player. There's thankfully not a huge variation
Speaker 1: in sizes and shapes of c d s. There's a
Speaker 1: little variation, but not much, so typically you can take
Speaker 1: any c D and put it into any CD player,
Speaker 1: but it won't necessarily work because of that region locking
Speaker 1: I was talking about. Sony solution was to create a
Speaker 1: special pit. So if you if you were to take
Speaker 1: a c D and take a microscope and look at
Speaker 1: the surface of a c D, you would see the
Speaker 1: that surface, the surface that the laser actually reads, has
Speaker 1: a series of bumps and pits in it, and that's
Speaker 1: actually where the data is, you know, that's the representation
Speaker 1: of those zeros and ones, that digital information. And this
Speaker 1: was a special pit that was at a depth that
Speaker 1: was beyond what a typical laser burner could do. So
Speaker 1: if you had a consumer grade c D burner, it
Speaker 1: would not be able to make a pit of this
Speaker 1: particular size on the c D. And that meant that
Speaker 1: you could encode things on CDs that could be picked
Speaker 1: up by specific region locked consoles, and it wouldn't allow
Speaker 1: things to play. So if you put a Japanese c
Speaker 1: D into an American console, the location of that pit
Speaker 1: would give away that it wasn't the right kind of
Speaker 1: c D for that console and it wouldn't play for you.
Speaker 1: So it's a way of preventing people from playing. It
Speaker 1: was also kind of a copy protection approach. So they
Speaker 1: did make a small tactical error with this particular strategy,
Speaker 1: and by that I mean a huge tactical error. I'll
Speaker 1: explain more in a moment, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. So what was that error that Sony made.
Speaker 1: You know they had created this region locking copy protection system.
Speaker 1: It was reliant upon the pit on a c D
Speaker 1: and a special region locked key that's hard coded into
Speaker 1: the consoles. Well, what Sony did was they included in
Speaker 1: the original PlayStation a pair of parallel input output ports
Speaker 1: and these reports that were meant to serve as a
Speaker 1: way to connect peripherals to the PlayStation. The idea being
Speaker 1: that further down the line, Sony might create something that
Speaker 1: would augment the PlayStation's abilities in some way, but you
Speaker 1: would have to connect it to the system somehow, and
Speaker 1: the way you would do it is through one of
Speaker 1: these ports. Now, not a lot of official Sony peripherals
Speaker 1: were ever actually produced, but some were pitched like a
Speaker 1: v c D player. V c D s are video
Speaker 1: compression discs. You can think of them as sort of
Speaker 1: a predecessor to DVD s. They're essentially video c D s,
Speaker 1: but for you to store video on the c D
Speaker 1: really have to compress it or it has to be
Speaker 1: super short, because the CD has a limited amount of
Speaker 1: data it can hold, and video takes up a lot
Speaker 1: of data. So typically you end up with video that's
Speaker 1: compressed so much that the quality is not exactly spectacular. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the only PlayStation ones that I know about that could
Speaker 1: actually support v c D playback were sold in Japan.
Speaker 1: I don't think there were any that were sold outside
Speaker 1: of Japan that had that capability, but I could be wrong. Anyway,
Speaker 1: third party companies looked at those parallel ports and they
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity. Some of those third party companies produced
Speaker 1: devices that players could plug into a PlayStation and those
Speaker 1: devices would bypass region locking. So if you were in
Speaker 1: the United States and you got one of these devices,
Speaker 1: you could plug it into your PlayStation and then you
Speaker 1: could get a Japanese game, put it in your system,
Speaker 1: and you could play games from Japan. Uh those games
Speaker 1: would probably be in Japanese, there might not be any
Speaker 1: translation there. It might be a little bit of a
Speaker 1: language barrier, but you would sidestep the region locking you
Speaker 1: would get access to those games. There were some companies
Speaker 1: that offered up versions of this hardware that were specifically
Speaker 1: meant to let you play pirated games on a PlayStation.
Speaker 1: So these were peripherals that got around copy protection and
Speaker 1: region locking. Later, Sony would revise the design of the
Speaker 1: PlayStation and remove the parallel ports, which forced gamers to
Speaker 1: go an extra step. So what people started doing at
Speaker 1: that point was they made these little micro chips that
Speaker 1: are called mod chips. They essentially did the same thing
Speaker 1: as those plug in devices would do, but you know
Speaker 1: those plug in devices, you would just attach those to
Speaker 1: a parallel port. For a mod chip to work, you
Speaker 1: would have to open up your PlayStation, take out the
Speaker 1: circuit board inside the PlayStation, and then solder the mod
Speaker 1: ship to a specific location on that circuit board, thus
Speaker 1: potentially damaging your your PlayStation as a result, and then
Speaker 1: reinstall it and then it would work in a way
Speaker 1: very similar to those plug ins. So if you knew
Speaker 1: what you were doing, you could get around this region
Speaker 1: locking and copy protection, but it wasn't for the faint
Speaker 1: at heart. Now, I'm not crazy about the concept of
Speaker 1: region locking in general, and I think, particularly in the
Speaker 1: age of streaming, it shouldn't be as big a deal
Speaker 1: as it is, although I also don't have to comb
Speaker 1: through licensing contracts that are a hundred pages long, so
Speaker 1: different regions of different agreements in place. It is very complicated.
Speaker 1: In concept. It's simple technologically, it's simple to stream something
Speaker 1: to all different regions, but more on the procedure rural side,
Speaker 1: the legal side, it's way more complicated anyway. I don't
Speaker 1: care for copy protection that punishes legitimate customers either. So
Speaker 1: if people and Sony has been really bad about this
Speaker 1: in the past, if people or companies put in copy
Speaker 1: protection that makes it harder to enjoy the stuff you
Speaker 1: legally purchased, that's bad. It actually encourages piracy because people
Speaker 1: will go an extra step to bypass the bad stuff
Speaker 1: in order to get to what they want, and then
Speaker 1: they essentially make it freely available for everyone else, or
Speaker 1: very frequently that happens. So this is not a black
Speaker 1: and white kind of topic. I'm not saying all copy
Speaker 1: protection is good and all piracy is completely unjustified. I
Speaker 1: don't think piracy in most cases is justified, but every
Speaker 1: now and then you come across a case where it's
Speaker 1: really hard to argue against it, especially if you're talking
Speaker 1: about copy protection that could potentially be harmful. Sony had
Speaker 1: a CD based copy protection that ended up creating a
Speaker 1: backdoor vulnerability in a computer. If you were to put
Speaker 1: the CD into a PC, that for example, would be
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible thing to do. It was a terrible
Speaker 1: thing to do, and it's the sort of thing where
Speaker 1: I would say, yes, absolutely break that copy protection, because
Speaker 1: it's breaking your computer otherwise. Anyway, this meant that the
Speaker 1: original PlayStation would be the target of bootleggers of I
Speaker 1: P pirates and folks trading or buying games outside the
Speaker 1: approved regions. Kudaragi denied that this was a big issue,
Speaker 1: even though it was undeniably happening, but that might have
Speaker 1: been because he was already thinking about the PlayStation two,
Speaker 1: which would take a slightly different approach to copy protection
Speaker 1: and eliminate some of the strategies that folks were using
Speaker 1: during the PlayStation one, So he was already looking ahead
Speaker 1: and not so much concerned with what was happening at
Speaker 1: that moment. So one interesting thing about the mod chip
Speaker 1: culture is that it launched a sort of seesaw battle
Speaker 1: between companies like Sony and the mod or hacker Commune City.
Speaker 1: Sony would make a change to the PlayStation, cutting off
Speaker 1: options for maters. The mats would then refine their approach
Speaker 1: and try something new. So, for example, early mod chips,
Speaker 1: when you soldered them into a circuit board, they were
Speaker 1: always on, so if you powered the PlayStation, the mod
Speaker 1: chip would also get power. But that gave Sony the
Speaker 1: chance to create some code that would do sort of
Speaker 1: a sweep and scan for the presence of mod chips,
Speaker 1: and if the system detected that there was a mod
Speaker 1: chip in place, then it would prevent the games from loading.
Speaker 1: So then the maters had to go in and build
Speaker 1: extra chips that would sort of put the mod chip
Speaker 1: in stealth mode. It would deactivate it during the sweep
Speaker 1: and then reactivate it when the sweep was done, which
Speaker 1: sounds a lot to me like the system Volkswagen had
Speaker 1: in place for their diesel engine cars where it would
Speaker 1: turn off some of the the output of the engine
Speaker 1: whenever it was in an emissions testing mode, and it
Speaker 1: would go back into full blast once the emissions testing
Speaker 1: mode was over. It's very similar to that anyway. One
Speaker 1: other things Sony tried to do to fight piracy had
Speaker 1: to do with the discs themselves. So if you take
Speaker 1: a PS one disc and you turn it over, so
Speaker 1: you're looking at the label at the first part, and
Speaker 1: you turn it over to look at the business side.
Speaker 1: You know, the side where the data is actually encoded.
Speaker 1: If it's an official PS one game disc, you'll see
Speaker 1: that that side is black. And the thought was that
Speaker 1: if you, as a gamer, were to see a PlayStation
Speaker 1: one disc that wasn't black on the underside, you would
Speaker 1: know immediately that you were actually looking at a pirated copy.
Speaker 1: You weren't looking at an official game. You were looking
Speaker 1: at something that someone had illegally produced, and that you
Speaker 1: would perhaps no better than to go down that dark,
Speaker 1: dark road and thus consign yourself to a life of
Speaker 1: video game crime. I guess. Secondly, there was a general
Speaker 1: belief that this black coding would foil pirates, and the
Speaker 1: assumption was that the average c D DREW drive would
Speaker 1: not be able to rip data off the black side
Speaker 1: of a disk, which might have been true for really
Speaker 1: early CD drives like the really old ones, but by
Speaker 1: the time the PlayStation came out, most drives were precise
Speaker 1: enough that that black coating did not present any kind
Speaker 1: of challenge. You could totally rip data off of a
Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation disc. Big games on the original PlayStation included Spiro,
Speaker 1: The Dragon, Castlevania, Symphony of the Night, Silent Hill, Metal
Speaker 1: Gear Solid, That's a huge one, tomb Raider, Dead or Alive, Resideval,
Speaker 1: and Taken. Those were all big, big games with the
Speaker 1: original PlayStation. In April n nearly three years after the
Speaker 1: PlayStation had debuted in Japan and two after it arrived
Speaker 1: in the United States, Sony would release the dual analog
Speaker 1: controller in North America and other Western markets, and this
Speaker 1: was the first PlayStation controller to feature two thumbsticks. You
Speaker 1: still had the four directional buttons on one side of
Speaker 1: the controller, and you had the four action buttons on
Speaker 1: the opposite side of the controller, but in between those
Speaker 1: two and set a little below them, were two thumbsticks.
Speaker 1: So it was this controller that would actually turn me
Speaker 1: off of PlayStation for a really long time because I
Speaker 1: always felt that this particular controller was really awkward to hold.
Speaker 1: It was just a little too cramped, too small, um
Speaker 1: so I felt that if I played any game for
Speaker 1: more than twenty minutes, my hands would just seize up.
Speaker 1: But the thumbsticks did add a lot of versatility to
Speaker 1: the PlayStation, and it opened up opportunities for developers to
Speaker 1: make new types of games to take advantage of those
Speaker 1: two thumbsticks. So, for example, you could have one thumbstick
Speaker 1: controller character while the second one controlled the camera angle.
Speaker 1: Or you could use one to control movement and the
Speaker 1: other to control the direction of a firing weapon like
Speaker 1: Smash TV. Games like MEC Warrior launched with support for
Speaker 1: the dual analog controller and helped promote that peripheral. The
Speaker 1: version that appeared in Japan a few months later included
Speaker 1: an additional feature not found in the North American version,
Speaker 1: which was vibration. That introduced the world to the first
Speaker 1: dual shock controller, and that gave the controller the ability
Speaker 1: to provide haptic feedback, that is, touch based feedback, and
Speaker 1: that's a feature game developers would use in lots of
Speaker 1: inventive ways. You want to indicate that a character in
Speaker 1: a game is anticipating danger when you send a vibration
Speaker 1: to the controller and now the player knows something's up.
Speaker 1: Or you want to send feedback when a player's character
Speaker 1: is hit by something in the game, you just buzz
Speaker 1: that controller. Now, the duel Shock was not the first
Speaker 1: controller to feature vibration because Nintendo actually released the rumble
Speaker 1: pack for the IN sixty four controller in April of
Speaker 1: that year. That was the same month that the non
Speaker 1: vibrating version of the Sony controller launched in the United States.
Speaker 1: Now the U s would get the upgraded controller in
Speaker 1: n So why was there l A Well, it beats me.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I've seen a lot of guesses
Speaker 1: as to why, but not a definitive answer. So the
Speaker 1: guesses ranged between two general approaches. There are a few others,
Speaker 1: but these are the two big ones. One is, well,
Speaker 1: Sony needed to get a new controller out because third
Speaker 1: party manufacturers were coming up with their own controllers, and
Speaker 1: Sony wanted to make sure that they were the dominant
Speaker 1: player in that space, but they didn't have the vibration
Speaker 1: version ready when they were needing to get into the
Speaker 1: market and compete against the third parties. A similar but
Speaker 1: slightly different approach, the second of the two arguments goes
Speaker 1: that the vibrating controllers were ready that Sony could have
Speaker 1: gone with that model, but it would have meant that
Speaker 1: the controllers would have been more expensive, and thus the
Speaker 1: third party versions that were on the market would undercut Sony,
Speaker 1: and so Sony would just waste money producing controllers no
Speaker 1: one was buying either way. The United States didn't get
Speaker 1: the duel Shock vibrating controller until but once it did,
Speaker 1: that controller would make an enormous difference, and Sony would
Speaker 1: quietly discontinue the non vibrating dual analog version. And while
Speaker 1: the duel Shock would set a standard for PS controllers,
Speaker 1: it didn't necessarily mean every system would debut with a
Speaker 1: vibrating controller at launch. More on that in future episodes.
Speaker 1: So Sony announced the new console, the PlayStation two, in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, and they launched it in two thousand, but
Speaker 1: the company continued to produce the original PlayStation, or technically
Speaker 1: a redesign of it, called the PS one. It was
Speaker 1: a little smaller than the original console, but otherwise had
Speaker 1: the same features and capabilities as your standard PlayStation. In fact,
Speaker 1: Sony kept making the PS one consoles and publishing games
Speaker 1: for the PlayStation one all the way up until two
Speaker 1: thousand six. Now that means that the original PlayStation had
Speaker 1: a lifespan of more than eleven years from the time
Speaker 1: it launched in Japan to the time that Sony discontinued production,
Speaker 1: which is pretty incredible. And it also set a precedent
Speaker 1: for Sony that the company tried to replicate later, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, in a nod to the nostalgic
Speaker 1: gamers out there, Sony released the PS Classic, which is
Speaker 1: a console with twenty pre installed PlayStation one games on it.
Speaker 1: It does not have an optical drive, so unlike the
Speaker 1: original PlayStation consoles, this one can't accept disks. You're limited
Speaker 1: to the games that have been hard coded and preloaded
Speaker 1: into the system. While Sony would focus a lot of
Speaker 1: attention on the PS two, the company continued to support
Speaker 1: the original console and it's enormous installed base of gamers
Speaker 1: for many years. But now it's time for us to
Speaker 1: shift our story to the PlayStation two. Specifically, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: two console would be one of the big players, in fact,
Speaker 1: the biggest player in the sixth generation of video game consoles.
Speaker 1: This was what some would call the eight bit era
Speaker 1: of video game consoles. It's also the last time anyone
Speaker 1: would bother describing consoles in as you know, having a
Speaker 1: word size of a certain number of bits, because that
Speaker 1: became less important. But this particular generation of consoles included
Speaker 1: not just the PlayStation two, but also the Sega Dreamcast,
Speaker 1: which launched a couple of years before the PlayStation two,
Speaker 1: and to this day it's still one of my favorite
Speaker 1: consoles of all time, but it pretty much fizzled in
Speaker 1: the marketplace. It also includes the Nintendo GameCube in that generation,
Speaker 1: which is one of my least favorite consoles I've ever owned,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft's first foray into the world of video game consoles.
Speaker 1: The original Xbox was also in the sixth generation. The
Speaker 1: Dreamcast was the first one to hit shelves, and it
Speaker 1: did so in Japan in just one year after Sony
Speaker 1: introduced the dual shot controller and two full years before
Speaker 1: the PlayStation two would arrive. So you would think, Sega,
Speaker 1: you've got two full years to establish a gamer base,
Speaker 1: a loyal customer base of gamers. You've got the headstart
Speaker 1: on Sony. Surely you couldn't fail. You'd be wrong. Kudaragi
Speaker 1: again headed up the design process for the sequel to
Speaker 1: the hottest selling video game console up to that point,
Speaker 1: and he was thinking about the PlayStation two pretty early on.
Speaker 1: Essentially during the launch of PlayStation one. He had ideas
Speaker 1: on how to prevent people from circumventing region locking and
Speaker 1: copy of protection. He had ideas about how the system
Speaker 1: should support more advanced features, and he had greater ambitions
Speaker 1: as well. It was his hope to establish a type
Speaker 1: of technology that would be transferable to other Sony products. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, he wasn't content in just making the
Speaker 1: best selling game system in the world. He wanted to
Speaker 1: establish a framework upon which many different Sony products could stand.
Speaker 1: He wanted to make a sort of universal set of
Speaker 1: blueprints for basic functionality. I like to think of it
Speaker 1: as kind of the Apple approach with iOS, you know,
Speaker 1: iOS powers, not just the iPhone, but also the iPad
Speaker 1: and as well as some other Apple products. I think
Speaker 1: that Kutaragi wanted to do the same thing and have
Speaker 1: the PlayStation console line sort of serve as the flagship
Speaker 1: for that. The PS two wouldn't quite reach that level
Speaker 1: of ambition, but it would become the top selling home
Speaker 1: console of all time, so I think that's a worthy
Speaker 1: accolade all by itself. One thing the PS two had
Speaker 1: that gamers really liked was backwards compatibility. So if you
Speaker 1: had a PS two, you could play most PS one
Speaker 1: games on it in addition to all the PS two titles.
Speaker 1: And this was another big reason why Sony would continue
Speaker 1: to support PS one development even after the law launch
Speaker 1: of the PlayStation two, because new PS one games could
Speaker 1: find a home either with gamers who had not yet
Speaker 1: upgraded to the new console or two gamers who had
Speaker 1: a PS two but they still like playing some of
Speaker 1: this stuff that was coming out for the older console.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to switch between consoles in the meantime,
Speaker 1: right even if you had to play PlayStation one and
Speaker 1: a PlayStation two, but you just hook up the PlayStation
Speaker 1: two to your television because it can play nearly all
Speaker 1: the games of the PS one. Because there were a
Speaker 1: handful of PS one titles that did not work on
Speaker 1: the PS two, you know, like Mortal Kombat Trilogy or
Speaker 1: this was a really big one. Metal gear Solid didn't
Speaker 1: work on some models of the PS two. That was
Speaker 1: a big blow. In addition, during the production span of
Speaker 1: the PS two, Sony actually made lots of different versions
Speaker 1: of the PlayStation two. A lot of them were indistinguishable externally,
Speaker 1: like you could put the two side by side and
Speaker 1: they would look identical, but inside they'd be slightly different.
Speaker 1: And some of the times those slight differences would mean
Speaker 1: that certain games would no longer run on that PS
Speaker 1: two certain PS one games. So the question about whether
Speaker 1: or not you could play any particular PS one game
Speaker 1: on a PS two depended on two things. Was it
Speaker 1: one of the titles that just wasn't supported by PS
Speaker 1: two in general? And what model of PS two did
Speaker 1: you have, because it might end up being incompatible with
Speaker 1: a specific PS one title. So it was a little complicated,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, backwards compatibility was really popular and it
Speaker 1: was a lauded feature, and it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that when consoles don't support it, gamers complain because Sony
Speaker 1: kind of set this precedent, and gamers loved that. The
Speaker 1: PS two had a new CPU with an unusual name.
Speaker 1: Sony called it the Emotion Engine, and the CPU included
Speaker 1: a single core processor, two vp us those are vector
Speaker 1: processing units for graphics, had a memory controller and an
Speaker 1: imaging processing unit or an image processing unit I should say,
Speaker 1: or an IPU in other words, and it also had
Speaker 1: a direct memory access component or d m a H.
Speaker 1: The architecture design meant that a properly optimized game for
Speaker 1: the PS two would have state of the art graphics.
Speaker 1: Not keep in mind we're talking about state of the
Speaker 1: art circuit two thousand here, and that was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: The chip ran at nearly three hundred mega hurts, which
Speaker 1: is ultra slow by today's standards, but at the time
Speaker 1: it was pretty speedy. It had thirty two megabytes of
Speaker 1: RAM plus four megabytes of video memory, and unlike the
Speaker 1: original PlayStation, which was white plastic, this one was black
Speaker 1: and it featured a dual shock to controller, which refined
Speaker 1: the design of the previous generation's controller, and it became
Speaker 1: the real standard from that point forward. I have more
Speaker 1: to say about the PlayStation two in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. The PS two
Speaker 1: had a memory card expansion slot, It could support forty
Speaker 1: eight channels of audio, had to USB ports, It had
Speaker 1: a FireWire port. Do you guys remember a FireWire? You
Speaker 1: could use that to hook up an an additional drive,
Speaker 1: which was required for certain games. There was a Final
Speaker 1: Fantasy game that required an additional component or else you
Speaker 1: just couldn't run it on a standard PS two. The
Speaker 1: PS two also included support for DVD playback, and DVDs
Speaker 1: had been developed between the time the PS one had
Speaker 1: come out and the launch of the PS two, so
Speaker 1: that gave the PS two the capability to serve as
Speaker 1: more than just a game console. It could act as
Speaker 1: more of an entertainment center, which would be greatly expanded
Speaker 1: upon by future generations of the consoles. In fact, have
Speaker 1: become a real point of focus for the Xbox line
Speaker 1: later that would your tap some gamers who I remember
Speaker 1: a certain E three presentation where people were leaving an
Speaker 1: Xbox UH stage event saying why didn't they talk about games?
Speaker 1: It's a game system. But this was sort of the
Speaker 1: beginning of that move to becoming more than a video
Speaker 1: game console. Now, while the PS two had the new
Speaker 1: Emotion Engine CPU, it wasn't an enormous departure from the
Speaker 1: PS one's operation. Both processors are risk processors r I
Speaker 1: s C. That stands for reduced instruction set computer, and
Speaker 1: this is where being a console can really pay off
Speaker 1: from sort of an engineering perspective. So if you think
Speaker 1: about it a general purpose computer with a regular CPU,
Speaker 1: it has to be able to do everything pretty well,
Speaker 1: and that includes running all sorts of different software, and
Speaker 1: different software required different processes, So that means the processor
Speaker 1: itself has to be able to run a wide spectrum
Speaker 1: of instructions, but consoles are limited in what they have
Speaker 1: to do. They don't have to do everything, they just
Speaker 1: have to do a subset of things really well. And
Speaker 1: games can come in all sorts of varieties, but the
Speaker 1: instructions all come from the same basic pool. So if
Speaker 1: you reduce the variety of instructions that you need to
Speaker 1: carry out, that means you narrow the scope of water
Speaker 1: processor has to do, and you simplify things. You rule
Speaker 1: out all the stuff that the processor is never going
Speaker 1: to have to handle, and then you optimize the processor
Speaker 1: to handle the stuff that matters a risk. Processor is
Speaker 1: capable of multitasking simple instructions. So the combination of running
Speaker 1: programs that consist of simpler tasks as well as the
Speaker 1: ability to multitask means that these processors are really efficient.
Speaker 1: That translates to us into speed. There's some other technical
Speaker 1: stuff that we're going to get into, and this is
Speaker 1: where we get super nerdy. But don't worry, I'm going
Speaker 1: to explain some stuff that I think is is really cool.
Speaker 1: It's also relevant p on the PlayStation. But um, this
Speaker 1: is why it gives me my opportunity to totally geek out.
Speaker 1: So the PS two has a floating point unit or FPU.
Speaker 1: What is that, Well, it's a special processor that handles
Speaker 1: specific types of complicated mathematic equations. Those usually involve non
Speaker 1: integers numbers that are after a decimal point, and these
Speaker 1: are called floating point operations because the decimal point can
Speaker 1: move or or float depending on the outcome of the calculation.
Speaker 1: So the complexity of these numbers creates an enormous challenge
Speaker 1: for the main processor. If it has to handle all
Speaker 1: those calculations, it will get bogged down and other stuff
Speaker 1: will slow down as a result. So to kind of
Speaker 1: take the pain away for the main processor, you build
Speaker 1: a specific process or a floating point unit designed to
Speaker 1: handle those calculations. Now you've probably heard about flops in computing.
Speaker 1: Now I'm talking about a type of operation. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about flops like Microsoft Bob, though that was a
Speaker 1: heck of a flop. No flops in this case refer
Speaker 1: to the speed with which the FPU can process these calculations.
Speaker 1: It actually stands for floating point operations per second. A
Speaker 1: giga flop would be one billion of those. The PS
Speaker 1: two's FPU is a six point two giga flop FPU,
Speaker 1: so it can perform six point two billion floating point
Speaker 1: operations in one second. The PS two has a component
Speaker 1: called the Graphics Synthesizer, which is in charge of stuff
Speaker 1: that includes and I love these terms, guys, strip yourselves
Speaker 1: in besier surfacing, alpha channel, UH, perspective correction, MIP mapping.
Speaker 1: I swear I didn't make any of these up here.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. I'll prove it. We'll go through these.
Speaker 1: So let's start with Besier surfacing. That's a three D
Speaker 1: modeling process, and the whole point of the process and
Speaker 1: it breaks down, how many polygons? How many simple shapes
Speaker 1: do you need to create a three dimensional object within
Speaker 1: a game? Right? Think of something like I don't know
Speaker 1: a car. Well, the more smooth you want that car,
Speaker 1: the more individual tiny little polygons you're going to need
Speaker 1: to represent that car. And Besier servicing bases the number
Speaker 1: on the level of detail necessary to make the object
Speaker 1: appear to be smooth to the viewer, and that number
Speaker 1: can change depending upon perspective. The PS two only performs
Speaker 1: these calculations on besier surfaced objects that are in the game,
Speaker 1: so not all objects are designated as besier surfaced objects,
Speaker 1: and perspective correction makes the texture map re size at
Speaker 1: the same rate as the object that has mapped that
Speaker 1: the texture map appears on. Texture maps are images like
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much what it sounds like. Just think
Speaker 1: of a texture and then think of a peating that
Speaker 1: texture over and over and over across all the surfaces
Speaker 1: of an object in order to make it look like
Speaker 1: it's made out of whatever that stuff is, like wood
Speaker 1: or stone or I don't know. Dog. For the PS
Speaker 1: two has that alpha channel I mentioned, what's that, Well,
Speaker 1: that's to add transparency effects to an object, and it's
Speaker 1: a special graphics mode that's used by digital video animation
Speaker 1: and video games. To make this happen, they use twenty
Speaker 1: four bits to define the amounts of red, green, and blue.
Speaker 1: Each of those get eight bits that are needed to
Speaker 1: create a specific color, and another eight bits are used
Speaker 1: to create a gray scale mask that acts as a
Speaker 1: separate layer for representing levels of object transparency. The degree
Speaker 1: of that transparency is completely determined by how dark the
Speaker 1: gray in that alpha channel is. If you make an
Speaker 1: area of that mask dark gray, you can make an
Speaker 1: object appear to be very transparent, so it can be
Speaker 1: like a ghost. If you do light gray, you can
Speaker 1: create other sorts of effects like water effects or fog effects.
Speaker 1: What about mip mapping. This is the one that sounds
Speaker 1: the most fake, right, It kind of sounds like the
Speaker 1: noise that the those muppets make on Sesame Street. Mip mapping.
Speaker 1: Mip mapping that I lose you all guys, because it's
Speaker 1: it's great, it's great character anyway. It's a form of
Speaker 1: texture mapping in which different sizes of each texture map
Speaker 1: are made. Does that mean Okay? So imagine you've got
Speaker 1: an image that represents a texture, right, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a picture of a cinder block very close up. So
Speaker 1: you've got that texture of a cinder block as a picture. Well,
Speaker 1: with mip mapping, you have different sizes of that texture image.
Speaker 1: And it's so that when you get closer or further
Speaker 1: away from a virtual object in a game, the texture
Speaker 1: that you see will match the distance you're at, so
Speaker 1: it won't look weird like you won't have a close
Speaker 1: up view of that cinder block texture when the cinder
Speaker 1: block is really far away. But here's the problem. You
Speaker 1: can't make a texture map for every possible distance your
Speaker 1: character or your point of view will have from a
Speaker 1: virtual object. That's just way too much, right, So if
Speaker 1: we were thinking in terms of feet, which doesn't really
Speaker 1: apply in the virtual world, but just stick with me.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you have texture maps that are equivalent
Speaker 1: to being three feet away, six ft away, or twelve
Speaker 1: feet away from the same object, and if you're further
Speaker 1: than twelve feet away, you don't see the texture because
Speaker 1: you're not you're not close enough to get that detail.
Speaker 1: Your virtual character, let's say that they are nine feet
Speaker 1: away from this object, so they're in between two of
Speaker 1: those image sets, right, the six ft and the and
Speaker 1: the twelve feet. So what do you do well with
Speaker 1: admit mapping. What it does is it takes the values
Speaker 1: for six ft and it takes the values of twelve feet,
Speaker 1: runs a mathematic application in order to determine what size
Speaker 1: that texture map should be for nine feet, and then
Speaker 1: displays it on the object. So that way, by having
Speaker 1: a few benchmarks, you can use those benchmarks to estimate
Speaker 1: the right size of that texture map for whatever virtual
Speaker 1: distance you are from that object. And it saves a
Speaker 1: lot of memory. You don't have to have, you know,
Speaker 1: an infinite number of different texture maps in order to
Speaker 1: represent objects. You know, realistically and it doesn't compromise too
Speaker 1: much on that realistic value, so that way things still
Speaker 1: look good in your game. It's a really clever way
Speaker 1: of fixing that problem. And the goal is always to
Speaker 1: use the smallest texture map possible given the distance that
Speaker 1: the object is from the viewer, because the smaller the
Speaker 1: texture map, the lower the processing load. So you have
Speaker 1: to have this balance between the size of the texture
Speaker 1: map versus the virtual distance of your character to the
Speaker 1: ob checked and also the effect you want to have
Speaker 1: because if you're on a close object, small texture maps
Speaker 1: create sort of a grainy surface that looks really bad,
Speaker 1: so you want to use larger texture maps when you're close.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things you have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration, and clearly that needs to happen all on
Speaker 1: an automated side in the background. Now, one day we're
Speaker 1: gon we're done with the super technical stuff, by the way,
Speaker 1: so wake up, we're gonna get back into the story here.
Speaker 1: One day after launching the PS two in Japan, Sony
Speaker 1: sold nearly one million units. Now remember the PlayStation one
Speaker 1: sold three hundred thousand units in the first thirty days.
Speaker 1: The PS two sold nine hundred eighty thousand units one
Speaker 1: day after launch in Japan. That's incredible. The new system
Speaker 1: costs the same as a DVD player around that time.
Speaker 1: It actually costs around two dars, which was the same
Speaker 1: price tag as the original PlayStation back in one launched
Speaker 1: at two. However, when we adjust for inflation, there is
Speaker 1: a difference. If we had just for inflation, it would
Speaker 1: mean that a brand new PS two bought with today's dollars,
Speaker 1: if it were the price the same as it was
Speaker 1: back in two thousand, would cost about four d fifty bucks. Today,
Speaker 1: a PS one would be more expensive because it came out,
Speaker 1: So if we had just for inflation, that's about five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Anyway, Since most DVD players cost around three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars or more in two thousand because they were
Speaker 1: relatively new technology, it meant that some consumers opted for
Speaker 1: a PS two over a standard DVD player because if
Speaker 1: they both cost the same amount, why would you not
Speaker 1: go and buy the one that also lets you play
Speaker 1: games on it, go and get a DVD player that
Speaker 1: can also play games. It makes sense. Sony had really
Speaker 1: positioned the PS two well, and it paid off big time.
Speaker 1: Sales quickly outpaced Sega's Dreamcast system, which again faded away
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, which meant that for about half
Speaker 1: a year, Sony was the only company that had a
Speaker 1: sixth generation console on the market. The Dreamcast was gone,
Speaker 1: and the GameCube and the original Xbox wouldn't come around
Speaker 1: until late two thousand one, So for half of two
Speaker 1: thousand one, the PlayStation two was the only game console
Speaker 1: in town. Nintendo and Microsoft would be left fighting over
Speaker 1: second place. Microsoft would squeak out a win over Nintendo,
Speaker 1: but even if you added the total number of sales
Speaker 1: of the Xbox to the total number of sales of
Speaker 1: the game Cube, you would just hit maybe a third
Speaker 1: of the total sales of the PS two. The PS
Speaker 1: two ultimately sold one hundred fifty five million units. It
Speaker 1: is the best selling home video game console so far.
Speaker 1: Sony was able to get really aggressive with its pricing
Speaker 1: as well, because in two thousand two they dropped the
Speaker 1: price tag from two dollars to one dollars in an
Speaker 1: effort to compete more with the GameCube and to undercut
Speaker 1: the Xbox. Now, like the PS one, Sony would continue
Speaker 1: to support the PlayStation two for a really long time.
Speaker 1: It launched in two thousand, and Sony would halt production
Speaker 1: in late two thousand twelve early two thousand thirteen, which
Speaker 1: is pretty phenomenal considering that the PS three came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand six. For like seven years, while the
Speaker 1: PS three was out, Sony was still making PS two's
Speaker 1: and still publishing PS two games. That's amazing. That would
Speaker 1: make the PS two the last of the major sixth
Speaker 1: generation consoles to go out of production. The Dreamcast was
Speaker 1: first made rest in peace because it died in two
Speaker 1: thousand one. The game Cube followed, but lasted until two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. The original Xbox stayed in production until two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and everyone else had moved on when Sony
Speaker 1: was still supporting PS two. Of course, it was simultaneously producing, promoting,
Speaker 1: and selling the PS three. But that's a console we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about in our next episode, and that
Speaker 1: one's really interesting for both good and bad reasons. Something
Speaker 1: else will talk more about in our next episode will
Speaker 1: be online capabilities. So when Sony first launched the PS two,
Speaker 1: that console didn't really have any way to connect online,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because Sega's Dreamcast did have ports that
Speaker 1: lets you connect to the Internet if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: but the PS two didn't have that. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Live Online feature that Sony
Speaker 1: got really serious about online gaming, and that's when the
Speaker 1: company released an adapter that players could connect to a
Speaker 1: PS two in order to give it online capabilities. Kutaragi
Speaker 1: would take this into account when he was working on
Speaker 1: the design for the PS three, which technically he had
Speaker 1: been doing since the launch of the PS two or
Speaker 1: maybe even before that. Like the PS one, Sony would
Speaker 1: release redesigns of the PS two, some with smaller and
Speaker 1: sleeker form factors. The company also saw some problems meeting demands,
Speaker 1: and not all of those were the fault of Sony's
Speaker 1: manufacturing processes. For example, in the Suez Canal, there was
Speaker 1: a Russian oil tanker that got stuck and it ended
Speaker 1: up blocking the passage of a Chinese freight ship that
Speaker 1: was carrying a vital supply of PS two units that
Speaker 1: were bound for Britain. There are many British gamers who
Speaker 1: spent many a night wondering when the heck they'd be
Speaker 1: able to get their little mits on a PS two. Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this episode about the PlayStation two I'll
Speaker 1: have a little bit more to say about the PS
Speaker 1: two in our next episode, and then we'll move on
Speaker 1: to talk about the PlayStation three and it's innovative and
Speaker 1: somewhat difficult CPU system. Uh that had a lot of
Speaker 1: promise and also ended up causing a lot of headaches.
Speaker 1: But I'll explain more about that in our next episode.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for a few your episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, get in touch with me. You can
Speaker 1: let me know on Twitter or Facebook. We use the
Speaker 1: handle tex stuff h s W at both and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.