Three decades have passed since Sony shared the magic of their PlayStation console with American audiences, and what wonderful decades they’ve been. From humble beginnings, Sony’s first console caught on like wildfire upon release, bringing video games firmly into the 3rd dimension.
What started life as a concept for Nintendo, the Sony PlayStation had already been out for nine months in Japan by the time it hit the States, and had seen successful games like Twisted Metal and Namco’s port of Tekken. Within a year, games like Crash Bandicoot and Resident Evil drove the console to huge sales numbers, with major successes like Gran Turismo soon to follow.
Now, thirty years later, the PlayStation is on its fifth generation, not to mention two dedicated handhelds and oddities like the PSTV and PS Portal. The PS5 is still receiving a ton of new releases and has already sold over 80 million units (not bad when compared with the PS1’s lifetime sales of 100 million).
The original PlayStation’s legacy lives on in miniature rereleases, game remasters, endless merchandising, reverse engineering, and, of course, emulation. With more than 4,000 games released for the console, we could spend our entire lives exploring its library.
Of course, we can’t celebrate the US release of the PlayStation without pouring one out for the Sega Dreamcast. Unleashed on the states exactly four years after Sony’s gargantuan success, Sega’s Dreamcast was the last gasp of a company who’s spent too many years shooting itself in the foot.
The Dreamcast wasn’t what killed Sega’s console hardware division; Sega’s own civil war sealed that fate. Released after the disastrously confusing launch of the Sega Saturn and the Sega 32X (not to mention the cancelled release of the Sega Neptune), the Dreamcast was meant to be the first of a new generation of 3D console gaming.
In all fairness, the hardware was impressive, but a muddled marketing strategy combined with a launch library consisting largely of ports, the Dreamcast was discontinued after less than two years. It wasn’t a complete failure: 600+ games and 10 million units sold put it in similar territory as the Nintendo Wii U. But by the turn of the millennium, Sega needed a lot more than a modest success to justify competing with Sony and Nintendo, not to mention Microsoft’s upcoming console.
Sega’s hardware division shut down the same year the Dreamcast was discontinued. By 2004, the company had been sold to Sammy, and an era had truly ended. Like the PlayStation before it, however, the Dreamcast’s legacy lives on through emulation, and over time, exclusives like Power Stone, Shenmue, and Skies of Arcadia have solidified a permanent spot in retro gaming history.
For Sony, the extraordinary success of the PlayStation led to a video game dynasty that endures to this day, and for the Dreamcast, it was a sad end to a major player in the industry. Despite their differences in commercial success, the two consoles will always have a place in gamers’ hearts thanks to their timeless games and immeasurable impact.
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