Bryank75
Banned
How Sony became a player in the gaming world
The company used canny design and marketing to transform its PlayStation into a cultural icon
www.ft.com
The first noise on Frank Ocean’s breakthrough album Channel Orange is not his voice but a sound effect — two syrupy synthesiser notes, a celestial twinkle, then a sound like slicing through compressed air, light glinting from a blade. It’s the start-up sound of Sony’s first gaming console, the PlayStation, which triggers a Proustian reflex in millions of gamers my age. Hearing it today, I am catapulted back to Christmas Day 1998, unwrapping the grey plastic machine and loving it immediately, unconditionally, with every fibre of my being.
Ocean is not alone in milking the widespread nostalgia for this era-defining console. The sounds of PlayStation haunt electronic music and grime. The console’s monogram logo is trending in modern streetwear. This cultural prominence is partly down to Sony’s success — the three bestselling home gaming consoles in history are all PlayStations — but it’s not the whole story. Nintendo and Microsoft have sold millions of consoles, too, yet neither brand became an icon of modern culture. How did PlayStation become the cool one?
Sony aligned its console with underground culture, sponsoring extreme sports events and music festivals. As rave music went mainstream in the mid-1990s, PlayStations lined the chill-out rooms of nightclubs such as Ministry of Sound. Zeitgeisty games such as Wipeout featured design from the trendy Designers Republic and music from electronic acts such as Chemical Brothers, New Order and The Prodigy. For decades games had been regarded either as kids’ toys or the reserve of bedroom geeks, but PlayStation was stylish, edgy, the opposite of Nintendo’s pastel-coloured innocence.
This reputation was cemented with the PlayStation 2 in 2000, an immediate phenomenon that sold 160m units and inspired one fan to change his name from “David Holmes” to “PlayStation 2”. The surreal adverts continued, including a baffling spot from David Lynch. Behind the posturing was a stellar line-up of games including Grand Theft Auto III, God of War and Metal Gear Solid 2, which pioneered the mature themes, cinematic narratives and open-world action genres that still dominate the gaming landscape today.
Continued in Article.
Last edited:
