25 years ago, PlayStation was instrumental in making 3D graphics the industry standard for video games. Sure, it was not the first piece of hardware that was capable of doing such things, and the industry was probably going to do it anyway, but PlayStation has changed the concept from something inaccessible to something more mainstream.

This story begins long before PlayStation, at the end of World War II, a time of immense change and growth for Japan.

After the capitulation of Japan after the war in 1945, the country was occupied by the United States to restore the Japanese economy and prevent the increasing influence of the Soviet Union on the Pacific. It also opened up the possibility of exporting goods to the US, which registered record growth after the war and established themselves as the richest nation in the world. After a decade of shattering the Japanese economy, Japan experienced tremendous economic growth and triggered a period of almost 50 years, which was called the country’s “economic miracle”. Until 1954, the Japanese economy boomed, mainly thanks to Keiretsu corporations – groups that gathered around Japanese banks and bought each other shares to ensure stability through mutual participation. Between 1967 and 1971, Japan experienced the largest growth period in its history, creating new manufacturing processes and consumer goods.

Japan’s economic growth led the country to make major advances in the electronics and technology industries in the 1980s, introducing innovative consumer electronics and personal computing devices such as Sony Walkman, VHS and game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System. A technology that is currently interesting for many Japanese companies? 3D graphics.

“Many companies wanted 3D – even contractors wanted 3D simulations,” said Kazuyuki Hashimoto in an interview for a recent polygon documentary celebrating PlayStation’s 25th anniversary.

Hashimoto worked at Square on games like Final Fantasy 7, but previously worked for Nichimen Graphics, a company that took over CG development and support for television networks. In the 1980s, companies like Nichimen made progress in 3D and made similar innovations as the electronics business. Sony participated in the action by launching the Gazo or System G system, a computer originally used to create real-time 3D graphics for broadcasting.

Sony’s development of a 3D video game console was largely the brainchild of Ken Kutaragi, the CEO and chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, whose interest in 3D video games was based on the Sony System G.

Kutaragi first encountered System G in 1984, when he was shown a demo of a computer-generated face that was changing shape in the now-defunct Information Processing Research Center in Atsugi, Japan. “It was far more advanced than the current graphics systems. It was fantastic. I was really impressed that such a thing exists, “he later told Reiji Asakura, author of Revolutionaries at Sony: The Genesis of the Sony Playstation and the visionaries who conquered the world.

“What a powerful gaming machine we could build with System G,” recalled Kutaragi, who had long been interested in the game industry and had written his thesis on computer graphics. Granted, at that time, a computer like System G was far too expensive for Kutaragi, but he predicted that the price of System G would have dropped in a decade so that the technology could be used in a consumer product such as a video game console. He was right.

Masanori Yamada, a senior engineer working on the early Tekken games, told Polygon that the first time he touched a PlayStation he felt the world was changing.

In the early 1990s, after a failed partnership with Nintendo, Kutaragi began secretly working on a new Sony-produced game console and implementing the now-cheaper System G technology. After convincing Sony CEO, Norio Ohga, that his company needed to build their own console, Kutaragi founded the original PlayStation initiative, which looked more like a computer entertainment company than a video game company. He wanted to build an operating system on the PlayStation and create libraries for it.

The Sony Corporation, which used to work with Sony Music in the early days, also decided to print games on CDs that had a large amount of data stored on them, rather than the cassettes of the time. She opened her doors for more than third-party rival Nintendo, pushing for 3D graphics on his new machine.

And the plan worked.

PlayStation has brought the vast majority of third-party developers onboard, ushering in the first era of 3D video game consoles. Developers could now experiment with a whole new dimension and get them into the hands of the players for a fraction of the cost expected by many. Some developers could hardly believe it.

Hashimoto first came across the 3D features of the PlayStation when Sony commissioned Nichimen to create a demo of a 3D Tyrannosaurus Rex. Earlier, Hashimoto said he had assumed that one day games would be in 3D, but by that time the technology was not there yet. Only computers costing more than $ 10,000 could handle the technology, and it would be impossible to do so on a home video game console, he thought.

“When I saw the specifications, my perception changed immediately,” Hashimoto said.

Other developers also found the use of 3D for the PlayStation a revelation. Masanori Yamada, a senior engineer working on the early Tekken games, told Polygon that the first time he touched a PlayStation he felt the world was changing.

PlayStation was released in December 1994 and quickly became a hit in Japan. In the first month, it sold more than 300,000 units in the market. In the United States, 100,000 pre-orders were completed by the time of its launch in September 1995. By the end of 1996, Sony announced it had sold seven million consoles worldwide. This was supported not least by games on the PlayStation, such as innovative and influential 3D games such as Metal Gear Solid, Crash Bandicoot, Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil.

Now, 25 years later, 3D graphics are the industry standard. The PlayStation console family has sold more than 430 million units in total. The entry of Sony into the 3D graphics has contributed significantly to the success of the PlayStation.

“We could do 3D games we’ve never seen before,” Yamada said. “It became the platform on which many creators could develop.”

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