The Playstation is a game console made by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first produced in the mid 90's which is part of the fifth generation of video game consoles. The original PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles, which has included later systems, the PS1 (a smaller more compact version of the original Playstation), Playstation2, a revised, slimline PS2, and the Playstation3. By March '05, the PlayStation/PSone had shipped a total of over 100.49 million systems, becoming the first console to ever reach the 100 million mark. Not bad considering it was still a running a 32 bit processor and was competing against Nintendo.

The first conceptions or ideas of the PlayStation date back way back to 1986. Nintendo had been trying to work with disk technology since the Super Nintendo, but the medium had problems. Its rewritable magnetic nature could be easily erased or modified, and the disks could be a piracy threat. Consequently, when details of CDROM/XA (extension of the CD-ROM format that combines compressed audio, visual and computer data, allowing all to be accessed simultaneously) came out, Nintendo was interested. CDROM/XA was being developed by both Sony and Philips simultaneously. Nintendo approached Sony to develop a cdrom add-on, tentatively called "SNES-CD", a contract was conceived, and work began on the device. Nintendo's choice of Sony was due to a prior dealing with Ken Kutaragi, the person who would later be referred to as "The Father of PlayStation", was the guy who had sold Nintendo on using the Sony SPC-700 processor for use as the eight-channel sound board set in the Super Nintendo console.

Sony also planned to develop another, Nintendo compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both SNES cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. This was also to be the format used in SNES-CD discs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendo's leading position in the video gaming market.

In 1989, the SNES-CD was to be announced at the June electronics show. However, when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony & Nintendo, he realized that the earlier contract essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNES CD-ROM format. Yamauchi was furious, saying that the contract was totally unacceptable. He secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the "Sony Play Station" would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive almost all of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony branded audio chip. However, at this point, Sony realized that the SNES technology was getting very outdated, and the next generation of console gaming was around the corner. Work began in early '93 on redoing the "Play Station" concept idea to target a new generation of hardware and software, as part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped, the space between the names was removed, and the Sony PlayStation was born.

The release dates of the Playstation were Dec. 3 1994 in Japan, Sept. 1 1995 in North America, Sept. 29 1995 in Europe, and Nov. 1995 in Australia. The launch in North America was very successful, with games like Twisted Metal, Warhawk, and Ridge Racer, there was plenty of quality games to be played on the system. Infact, many of the launch games ended up having many sequels that also ended up on later consoles. The launch price was $299US, which also happened to be the launch price of the later released PS2.

The Playstation received many changes or variants over the years, but the biggest changes were the amount of ports that were on the back of the system. The early Japanese model had and S-Video port which was removed by the time it was released in North America. Other changes include cd drive relocation, modified heat shielding, and wiring simplified on PS1 models. They also made it so that the PS had less cd reading problems by putting in better lasers.