In 1992, Ken Kutaragi, the “Father of the PlayStation,” unveiled to the board of Sony a proprietary CD-ROM-based system he had been working on which involved playing video games with 3D graphics to the board. In 1994, the original PlayStation was released. Now, in 2014, Sony PlayStation lives on.
The Sony PlayStation 4 (PS4) was released in the United States last November, but wasn’t released in Japan, the home country of the console, until last Saturday. It was completely sold out by Sunday.
The 332,000 units sold, though not as large as the million plus in the United States at the launch, beats the 80,000 units of the PS3 sold in 2006 in Japan. However, the PS2 still reigns supreme, selling 650,000 units when it first was released in 2000.
In comparison, Nintendo Wii sold 360,000 in its launch week and the 3DS actually sells approximately 80,000 during an average week in Japan (the same number of the PS3s in 2006.)
In competition, Microsoft announced an Xbox One bundle, still priced at around $500 but now including Titanfall. The company will most likely plan a Japanese launch, although it’s not as popular as the other consoles, but no date has been set.
Along with the PS4, Sony also recently introduced the PlayStation App, allowing PS4 users to turn tablets and smartphones into a second screen during gameplay. And the new PS4 game controller, unlike those of its predecessors, includes a share button which makes it possible to view in-game content being streamed live from friends, increasing social gameplay.
In addition, adding to the PlayStation 4 excitement, the popular zombie apocalypse game, Dead Nation, will be free to download for PlayStation Plus users in Hong Kong on March 6. No North American date has been set yet, though it’s most likely to follow.
According to Polygon, Dead Nation was originally released in the U.S. for PS3 in 2010 on the PlayStation Network.
It will be interesting to see if the PS4 will outsell the Nintendo Wii in Japan by the end of the week.
Image via Wikimedia Commons