PlayStation history could have been much different, as Sony refused to put its name on the console

30 years goes a long way. For three decades Sony has been a fundamental actor in the video game industry. What began with a console that arrived in the middle of the war between Nintendo and SEGA has ended up becoming one of the main competitors in the industry. But executives didn’t always have faith in the product. Shaw Layden, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment of America, has revealed that the board considered the possibility of not placing Sony’s name on the console.

PlayStation and the fear of failure in the middle of the war between Nintendo and SEGA

“I remember having an early presentation where they brought a PlayStation prototype to the president’s office to see what they were building,” Layden begins in an interview given to Eurogamer. “I remember being in mid-’94, before launch, standing in a boardroom playing Ridge Racer and thinking ‘Oh my god, this is going to be amazing. But within Sony, I think that a good part of the management at that time did not take it seriously. They thought: ‘Oh god, Sega and Nintendo control this [the video game industry]. Do you think Sony is going to come in and divide that into a three-piece pie?’ It was a fool’s errand. I think some even called it that back then. But [Sony president at the time, Norio] Ohga-san was a believer. A lot of people thought we were taking a risk. It was a struggle to have the Sony name on that machine; They didn’t want to be associated with that.”.

Finally, the plan, as it could not be otherwise, prospered to the point of being an indivisible element of the PlayStation brand. The games division grew to become a financial lung in the coffers of the Japanese. With its best and worst moments, PS is in the place it is thanks to a powerful catalog and pieces of hardware dedicated to video games as the main pillar.

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