Gaming Consoles

Sony's interest in developing video game interfaces with superior graphics capabilities dates back to 1988 when they came up with a business agreement with Nintendo Corporation to develop a video game that has superior graphics capabilities. The plan was to develop a CD-ROM based gaming interface.
However, both Sony and Nintendo decided to cancel this joint venture soon. Even though Sony couldn't develop a CD-ROM based gaming interface, they were not ready to leave the plans of building a video game device.

It took Sony few more years to develop their own gaming device and in 1991, PlayStation was launched. However, very soon after the release, Sony observed that the PlayStation need a lot of changes to become a successful home entertainment system.
This time, Sony wanted to come up with a foolproof design and the research went on to achieve this goal.

This is one of the reasons behind Sony's long delayed introduction of newer version of PlayStation, after the launch of the original version.
Sony has launched the new PlayStation only in 1994, after 3 years of the first version. This launch was quite a success worldwide mainly due to the large variety of titles that Sony offered. However, after the release of PlayStation, there were several technological changes in media technologies.

One of the next major upgrades in the PlayStation series came in 1999. Sony brought several revolutionary features in this PlayStation version.
Some of the noted features were a high end graphics card and DVD feature. This brought superior graphical experience to video games and was more than enough for Sony to keep their PlayStation fans stick to the brand. Due to their competitor Sega's incompetency to meet customer demands in terms of production numbers benefited Sony a lot.

Sony enjoyed a great monopoly in video game industry with PlayStation until 2000, when Microsoft officially introduced its Xbox video game interfaces. However, Xbox couldn't create a successful competition to Sony due to its high price tag and limited number of games during launch. Sony also launched PlayStation 2 with a lot of added features which wiped off Xbox's claim as a graphically advanced game.

Sony faced a lot of trouble in 2000, to keep PlayStation 2 live up to the expectations. Interestingly none of the issues were related to the product's quality except a rumor about a faulty memory card.
The main trouble for Sony was to meet the production requirement. On the first day itself, most of the units were sold and Sony found it very tough to meet customer demand. Also, DVD players were very expensive during those days so many people bought PlayStation 2 as a DVD player.

After going through several ups and downs, PlayStation secured its own position as a gaming device. There was a time when PlayStation alone contributed 40 % of Sony's market share. Today Sony enjoys a good market share and with several video game titles, Sony manages pretty well to keep their enthusiasts stick to the brand.