LogInShawn Layden recalled the origins of PlayStation, which has recently had its 30th anniversary.
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On December 3, PlayStation had its 30th anniversary. In a recent interview, Former PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden recalled the console's original launch and how it entered the market with established competition.
Layden worked at Sony when the console was in the early development stages. He joined Sony in 1987 and first took the position of an assistant to Akio Morita, the company's chairman at the time, and didn't participate in creating the console. Layden thought that the device would be "amazing." However, it was not a universal opinion among the company's workers. Layden shared:
"But within Sony, I think a lot of the leadership at the time didn't take it seriously. They thought: 'Oh my god, Sega and Nintendo own this thing [the console industry]. You think Sony's going to come in sideways and try to divvy that thing up into a three-piece pie?' It was a 'fool's errand', I think some of them might have even called it at the time. But [then-Sony president Norio] Ohga-san was a believer. A lot of people thought we were taking a risk. It was a fight to get the Sony name onto the machine – they didn't want to be associated with it."
Layden joined PlayStation in 1996. Terry Tokunaka, President of PlayStation at the time, suggested he work as a video games producer at a new company, Sony Computer Entertainment. In response to the offer, Layden said that he didn't know "anything about making video games." However, Tokunaka upfrontly said: "It's all right. None of us do either. This is the perfect time to get in. We'll all make this stuff up as we go along together."
Shawn shared that working at PlayStation at the time required quickly catching up with what was happening. He had to go to E3, the annual trade event for the video game industry, the largest at the time, shortly after the start of work:
"I landed in LA in 1996 going to E3 after only being in the company for 10 days. If you want total immersion in the game business as a neophyte, get dropped into E3 on day 10. You either catch on really quick, or you get rolled over by the leviathan. "
To withstand competition, Sony needed to create more of its own games, as SEGA and Nintendo were stronger in this sphere at the time. One of the most important decisions was to make a console for third-party developers. Gradually, Sony expanded its catalog of original titles, for instance, with PaRappa the Rapper, SingStar, and Shadow of the Colossus."
"It was a first-party imperative to show, firstly, the power of the platform, and then secondly, the endless categories that we could build games into. We weren't just trapped into three genres and trying to fight for market share from each other."
Recently, it was reported that Sony is working on a new handheld for PlayStation 5 games, based on the 2023 PlayStation Portal.
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