Images have surfaced on Friday morning depicting a prototype PlayStation console which was reportedly developed jointly by Nintendo and Sony in the early 90s, but never released.
The console, which was announced in 1991 but never released until Sony developed one on its own in the mid 90s, was presented by a Reddit user going by name of Analogueboy, who posted both a set of pictures and a video of it. The images seem to be legit according to multiple tech sites.
Analogueboy claims that he found the retconned console in a box of his father’s old stuff. He said that his father had worked in the 90s with a man named Olaf from what he calls as “the Mario company” – Nintendo – and he left it behind after a visit to their house. This Olaf may or may not be Olafur Johann Olafsson, the founder of Sony Interactive Entertainment (Sony’s gaming division) itself.
The unreleased device was designed to be the first console which would be able to read CD’s in addition to SNES cartridges. The developing compact disks had a lot more storage space than cartridges of yore and allowed the creation of more complex games, especially from a graphical standpoint.
Though no official news ever came by of the reasons behind its cancellation, it is supposedly related to the fact that licensing disagreements between the two companies pushed Nintendo to sign a deal with Sony rival Philips for the creation of the SNES – CD format.
Nothing ever came out of it actually, though the SNES-CD prototype dubbed “Play Station” was presented to the public at 1991’s Consumer Electronics Show, few months before Nintendo would announce their deal with Philips.
This may have ultimately been for the best in Sony’s case, which started developing a new console on its own. This ultimately ended in the CD-ROM exclusive PlayStation, released in December 1994, and redesigned after in 2000 as the PSone. The console was widely successful commercially, with more than 100 million units sold worldwide, providing serious competition to Nintendo’s own N64 which only managed to sell 32.9 million units worldwide.
The original PlayStation, discontinued in 2006, was followed by improved new versions developed by Sony at each console generation leap, with the PlayStation being released in 2000, the PlayStation 3 in 2006 and the current PlayStation 4 which was released in 2013.
Image Source: Endgadget
