Yeah, I know this article is 3 days late. But remember, I'm only ten, and in 5th grade you get a lot of homework. Today, I finished early, so I could write this post. Now, here's the stuff about the original PlayStation. It was released in 1995 and was Sony's first console. Now, it actually wasn't Sony's idea to make a game console. Here's what happened: Nintendo wanted to make a seperately-sold disk drive for the Super Nintendo. Nintendo asked Sony to produce a disk drive for the SNES, Sony agreed. A contract was signed, and work began on the "Super Nintendo CD." Sony also planned to develop another, Nintendo compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both Super Nintendo cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. The SNES-CD was to be announced at the June 1991 Consumer Electronics Show. But when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo, he realized that the earlier agreement pretty much handed Sony complete control over any titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format. Yamauchi decided that the contract was totally unacceptable and he secretly canceled all plans for the Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Instead of announcing a partnership between Sony and Nintendo, at 9 a.m. the day of the CES, Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that Nintendo was now allied with Philips, and Nintendo was planning on abandoning all the previous work Nintendo and Sony had done. Lincoln and Minori Arakawa had, unknown to Sony, flown to Philips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance of a different kind—one that would give Nintendo total control over its licenses on Philips machines. After the collapse of the project, Sony considered stopping their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had developed so far and make it into a complete, stand-alone console. Now Nintendo got really mad, so Nintendo sued Sony, claiming breach of contract and attempted in federal court to obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name. The federal judge in charge the case denied the injunction and, in October 1991, the first version of the new Sony PlayStation was revealed. However, probably only 200 or so of these were ever 
produced. By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal where the Sony PlayStation would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the profits from the games, and the SNES would still use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, Sony decided in early 1993 to begin reworking the PlayStation concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. As part of this process the SNES cartridge port was removed. The PlayStation was extremely successful, but I guess Nintendo must be pretty ticked off by this. Aside from the Sony-Nintendo deal, the PlayStation was the first video game console to sell 100 million units, soon to be replaced by the PlayStation 2, which now has sold 140 million units! It is rumored that the success of the PlayStation is widely believed to have influenced the demise of the cartridge-based home console. While not the first system to utilize an optical disc format, it was the first success story, and ended up going head-to-head with the last major home console to rely on cartridges—the Nintendo 64.
Nintendo was very public about its skepticism toward using CDs and DVDs to store games, saying that there were longer loading times and durability issues. It was widely speculated that the company was even more concerned with copyright infringement, given its substantial reliance on licensing and exclusive titles for its revenue.
The increasing complication of games (in content, graphics, and sound) pushed cartridges to their storage limits and this fact began to turn off third party developers. Also, CDs were appealing to publishers due to the fact that they could be produced at a significantly lower cost and offered more flexibility (it was easy to change production to meet demand). In turn, they were able to pass the lower costs onto consumers. One major industry disadvantage of CDs was illegal copying due to the advent of CD burners and mod chips; however, this ironically became a selling point of the PlayStation. The PlayStation's production was discontinued on March 23, 2006. But games are still sold to PlayStation 2 and 3 owners. So I guess it isn't completely dead yet, like Sega's consoles. :-)
produced. By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal where the Sony PlayStation would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the profits from the games, and the SNES would still use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, Sony decided in early 1993 to begin reworking the PlayStation concept to target a new generation of hardware and software. As part of this process the SNES cartridge port was removed. The PlayStation was extremely successful, but I guess Nintendo must be pretty ticked off by this. Aside from the Sony-Nintendo deal, the PlayStation was the first video game console to sell 100 million units, soon to be replaced by the PlayStation 2, which now has sold 140 million units! It is rumored that the success of the PlayStation is widely believed to have influenced the demise of the cartridge-based home console. While not the first system to utilize an optical disc format, it was the first success story, and ended up going head-to-head with the last major home console to rely on cartridges—the Nintendo 64.Nintendo was very public about its skepticism toward using CDs and DVDs to store games, saying that there were longer loading times and durability issues. It was widely speculated that the company was even more concerned with copyright infringement, given its substantial reliance on licensing and exclusive titles for its revenue.
The increasing complication of games (in content, graphics, and sound) pushed cartridges to their storage limits and this fact began to turn off third party developers. Also, CDs were appealing to publishers due to the fact that they could be produced at a significantly lower cost and offered more flexibility (it was easy to change production to meet demand). In turn, they were able to pass the lower costs onto consumers. One major industry disadvantage of CDs was illegal copying due to the advent of CD burners and mod chips; however, this ironically became a selling point of the PlayStation. The PlayStation's production was discontinued on March 23, 2006. But games are still sold to PlayStation 2 and 3 owners. So I guess it isn't completely dead yet, like Sega's consoles. :-)
*Thanks to Wikipedia for some of the info!
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