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In many American homes,
there is a reasonable chance

that the video game Nintendo is hooked
up to the television set you're watching.

There were more Nintendos
bought for children last Christmas

than any other gift.

Die, please die.
Please die.

And one in every three Japanese
homes has Nintendo as well.

In some ways, Nintendo's
history is modern Japanese history.

For most
of its 99-year history,

Nintendo made board games
and playing cards.

Traditional products
for a traditional way of life.

In Japan and America,
tradition has given way to craze.

Game preparation exercise!
One! Two!

Three! Four! Five!

Six! Wow!

Nintendo
was very smart about it.

They dipped their toe in the
market in 1984, in New York,

just 10% of the country,

and established that there
was a market for quality gaming.

They started with a very
high-end little robot,

and they sold 100,000 in
New York in the first year.

Up. Down.

Right. Left.

And Nintendo, I think, were
the first company to appreciate

that they need to treat their
consumers as if they're selling them a toy,

that needs to bring people
pleasure and joy.

They worked very hard
with the retailers

to get the products stocked and
distributed in breadth and depth.

And the second thing is, they put a
huge amount of money behind Mario.

Super Mario Brothers.

It was a Nintendo-dominated
business.

And I was working
at Sega at the time,

and our market share
with the Master System was 4%.

Nintendo had 94%

and there was some Atari system
lingering on that had 2%.

And 4%, that's crazy.

That's Mom going to the store

and buying a Master System
rather than an NES

because she just doesn't know that
there are two types of systems out there.

Sega really took time
to self-reflect,

and they wanted to understand how
they could better tackle the market.

They looked at where they
succeeded, where they failed,

and they kind of reinvented
themselves a little bit.

The reason, I think,

Sega had any kind of
chance at all against Nintendo

was because they had amazing
software development divisions.

But their focus was arcade.

I think Sega probably thought
that with the skills they have,

there was another market
they could take their games to.

We were going to try to leave
Nintendo with the younger kids

and position ourself as the teen
and college-age machine.

The Nintendo system's brain
is an 8-bit computer chip,

a technology rapidly
becoming outmoded.

Nintendo has a more powerful
16-bit system already hot in Japan,

but it won't arrive in the
States till late next year.

The 16-bit Genesis system
by Sega. Genesis does it all.

"Sega does what Nintendon't."

And so that was the famous
phrase that we had,

and we would show
different visuals

of something that we could do
with Sega Genesis

that Nintendo didn't do
with their 8-bit system.

And so, we were very much going
after Nintendo right from the beginning.

Sega's Genesis
is Nintendo's nemesis.

It's one of two 16-bit systems
that are already in the US.

Sega clearly hopes
to leapfrog Nintendo

by touting 16-bit's advantages.

There was an element in all
their marketing, all their promotion,

their TV ads,
their print ads,

where they went
for style over substance,

and it almost made Nintendo
look a little bit dated.

Sega!

Sega's marketing campaign
absolutely resonated with me,

because being somebody
who was fairly tech-oriented

and interested in the advancement
of graphics, I wanted the best.

I wanted experiences that were going
to surprise me, were going to take me

beyond what I had been playing
for the last four or five years.

So they promised that you
could get the arcade experience,

not in the arcade, but in your
home, through the Sega machines.

So when the market moved
from 8-bit to 16-bit,

with the introduction of
the Mega Drive/Genesis,

Super Nintendo/Super Famicom
devices in the late '80s,

then we had a market
that was really taking off.

The graphics were becoming
more realistic,

the games were becoming deeper
and more sophisticated,

and you had two companies
that were well financed,

that were taking each other on
in the marketplace.

So, when you have two fighting
head-to-head, the whole market grows.

And suddenly, games became a big
mass market entertainment proposition.

Although the games themselves
were still relatively simple

and appealed to a relatively
narrow demographic,

everybody knew what Sega
and Nintendo was about.

At Sega,
we knew at some point

that cartridges with
a limited amount of memory,

or very expensive memory,

was going to have to
give way to optical media,

where you had
much larger memory.

Interesting.

The encoded information
on this disc

is read by a laser beam.

Hmm.

The problem was that
cartridges as a format

went up in increments
of about eight meg,

and there's only so much
visual data you can get on those

without the cartridge getting more
and more expensive for the consumer.

So, consequently,
people felt

that if you're going to improve
the graphics or add the movies

that they felt
everyone wanted,

you had to do it
via streaming from a CD.

So, Sega came in with this
bolt-on called the Mega-CD.

and it basically allowed you
to play CD games

with your Mega Drive controller

and using the processing power
of the Mega Drive.

We were convinced that the
audience was going to want to enjoy

music, animation,
full-motion video,

and now we had
to develop games.

Sony had approached us.

They had a studio
down in Santa Monica.

They wanted
to work with us,

and they understood
that the future was going to be

with some kind
of optical disc medium.

Sony had ventured into
distribution of game software

to line up with its
distribution of

movie software
and music software.

That was called
Sony Electronic Publishing.

It was set up under
Sony of North America,

who reported at the time
to Mickey Schulhof

and the management of that,
Sony Electronic Publishing,

was assigned to Olaf Olafsson.

They not only built
a distribution network,

but they also built some in-house
game development capability.

Sony Imagesoft
made mostly horrific,

but sometimes really good,
but mostly terrible games

for other platforms
based on Sony properties.

More often than not,
Sony Pictures.

So, we did, like, Dracula
Sega CD, which was horrible,

and Last Action Hero,
and, like, Cliffhanger.

And if you want to see one of
the ugliest games of all time,

look at Cliffhanger
for Game Boy.

It is just abysmally horrific
to look at and play.

Every now and then we would
pump out an amazing game

or publish an amazing game,
like...

I thought Hook was great,
from the movie.

We did a game called Skyblazer,
Equinox, Solstice.

But more often than not,
they were terrible.

And so, we formed an alliance
where we would each fund six games,

and they would fund three
and we would fund three.

Or it might've been eight, and we
funded four and they funded four.

But it was something like that.

And so, that was the deal
we struck with Sony.

Don't you love the smell
of the sewers in the morning?

They smell like victory!

The trouble is that
the games that came with it

were largely
just FMV exercises,

so you ended up with Kriss
Kross: Mix Your Own Video,

which was where you used the controller
to edit together Kriss Kross videos.

And there was Night Trap,

where you flicked between
a number of security cameras

to save girls from these
bizarre kidnappers.

But the quality of the
movies was so grainy,

it immediately
took you out.

So, on the one hand, you've
got the relatively pristine graphics

of something like Road Rash,

but in order to get
to Road Rash,

you then have to go to
some dreadful movie, which is,

you know, smeary and blurred, and
looks like an eighth-generation VHS.

Ken Kutaragi had had
an incredible career

inside of Sony
up to this point.

He was very interested in sound
processing and signal processing,

and inventing
new sound formats

that were powerful and possible
with new silicon technologies.

And that led to the
collaboration with Nintendo,

where Sony made
the sound chip

that went into the Super
Famicom and the Super Nintendo.

Through the partnership

on the sound chip
for the Super Nintendo,

Sony and Nintendo entered into a
contract to develop some new technology.

The first was going to be a disc
drive that Nintendo would sell,

which would be an add-on to the
Super Famicom/Super Nintendo device.

And Sony would sell a combined
console and drive, all in the same machine,

that was called
the Sony PlayStation.

So he was getting more
and more into console design,

and Ken could see that

putting console games on CDs
was the way forward.

When they came to write up
the actual joint venture,

Sony said, "Well,
we'll make the disc

"and we'll charge the $8
royalty and collect it,

"and, you know, we'll
figure out how to split that.

"And you can make
the cartridges

"and you can charge the
publisher the $8 royalty,

"and then we can talk about
how we share the profits on that."

And Nintendo said, "Wait
a minute. Stop the music.

"We make the tollbooths.

"You can make the discs, but
you're not making a tollbooth.

"We make the tollbooths.

"We'll sell the discs, just
like we sell the cartridges.

"We'll charge the $8, whether
they buy a disc or a cartridge."

Sony and Nintendo
were uneasy bedfellows,

and I think that
Nintendo's view

of what Sony's position was
in developing this thing for them

differed from what Sony probably
hoped was going to be a foot in the door.

Sony and Nintendo
were working together

to come up
with the new hardware,

but I think Sony
was a little too greedy,

and tried to take over
almost everything.

I think Nintendo realized they
were giving too much power to Sony

in the manufacturing of
the discs for the platform.

Sony had the right to license
other developers and publishers

to create games
for the platform,

and that was the real heart
of the business model

between Sony and Nintendo.

I negotiated with Mr. Idei,
the president of Sony,

and told him,
"Let's go different ways."

And in a surprise
announcement at CES,

there was an announcement
that Nintendo would be

joint-venturing with Philips

on the disc part
of the device.

It was very embarrassing
to Sony

to have a relationship that they
thought was going to be with Nintendo

and they were kicked out
and replaced by Philips,

and that was the fuel that fired the
creation of the PlayStation business,

and ultimately, possibly
looked back on in history

as one of the biggest mistakes
Nintendo ever made,

'cause they made
a monster of a competitor.

I was still quite new, perhaps not even
a month had passed since my hiring

when the atmosphere felt very different
than usual as I arrived at work one day.

I thought that something must have
happened that would change everything

bring about the end of an era.

I asked what had happened, and was told
that we had been informed that

Nintendo had decided to go it alone

Even when the joint project

with Nintendo was cancelled

Kutaragi-san said that we at Sony

should make the system ourselves.

Something that Kutaragi-san said then

something that influences me even now

is that we may not have
the greatest chance at success

but it's not like failing here would
cost us our lives or anything

so we should just go for it.

And so, when Ken put together his
plan for a new standalone console

that would be,
eventually, the PlayStation,

and he took that to the
then-president of Sony, Norio Ohga,

and said, "Could I have your
support to make this happen?"

Ohga -san, who had obviously
been deeply embarrassed

by the relationship
breakdown with Nintendo,

said, "Yes, you have
whatever you need."

This was still
a secret project.

It was a skunkworks,
if you will.

It was called Computer
Entertainment Project Number One.

But that was 30 or 40 people in a
building on Aoyama Dori in Tokyo

that were starting to plan

what would become both
the company and the product.

The New Generation.

New generation system,
new generation games,

and a new generation of value.

They're all part of the Sega
generation for the '90s.

The Sega generation begins with
the 16-bit technology of Genesis.

When we were looking for the
next generation after Genesis,

it was quite an interesting
and difficult challenge.

In terms of the Saturn...

The head of development at Sega of
America was a guy named Joe Miller,

and he was very concerned
about the chipset

that Sega Japan was going
to use for the Saturn.

He was concerned that
it wasn't quite good enough,

in terms of an advancement
over 16-bit.

So, that was one part
of the Saturn development.

Another part
of the Saturn development

was introducing what was
going on with Saturn to Sony.

Sony, now, was our very strong
partner in developing third-party titles,

particularly, obviously,
those CD-ROM titles.

And so, they wanted
to be involved in

the development of
the next hardware system.

Well, this made
sense to me.

Olaf Olafsson
was exec VP at Sony

and Mickey Schulhof
was president of Sony America,

and there were some
technical guys.

And we all thought
this was a pretty good idea,

to have a combined hardware
system, Sony/Sega or Sega/Sony,

because we all knew we
didn't make money on hardware.

Why not do a combined system
and make your money on software?

Well, I thought
this was brilliant,

because we were certainly
better at developing software

than Sony was
in those days,

whether you're talking
about Sega of America

or Sega Japan or Sega Europe.

And so, this meant that if we
could have a hardware system

where we split the loss
on the hardware

and each made profit
off of our own software,

brilliant for Sega.

This had to be a win-win.

And so, I wanted
very much to do this,

and interestingly,
so did Sony of America.

When we explained it
to Nakayama-san,

he thought
it was a terrible idea.

He did not want to do it.

He said, "Sony doesn't know
anything about the video game business.

"Why should we help them?
Let's not do this."

So, I was very disappointed, and I
wasn't happy about Saturn as it was.

So, 3DO
was really the device

that announced that
they were, in a big way,

going to start making
CD-ROM-based video game machines.

There was another system
called the TurboDuo,

but it came out in Japan,
and it had a CD-ROM player.

Now, it was the first time on a video
game I heard an actual audio score,

like an orchestra
or like a band, right?

It was real music, not...

You know, not chip music,

but it was real recorded music
being played back.

And the fidelity of the graphics
was a little better.

So, the announcement of the
3DO meant the power was there,

and the capacity
to store on a disc

was suddenly 600 megabytes,
not 512K.

The 3DO was a stepping stone.

I mean, it didn't quite have
enough power to create 3D games

but it was being
billed as such.

It was, I have to say, a very
difficult hardware to work with.

It wasn't based on triangles.
It was based on twisted squares.

I've never seen anything
like that before or since.

And the sales were just
miserable as well.

Only sold, if I remember,
about one million units.

Most of which had to do with the
$700 price point for the console.

I mean, if you put that in
today's dollars, with inflation,

that's got to be
close to $1,500.

The pitching was very... You know,
it was going to be the next big thing.

It really wasn't,
and it was limited.

I think most of those, either
the CD-i or the Marty or the 3DO,

were just a little bit
ahead of reality.

All you had to do was have a
basic understanding of computing

to know that it would all be
about capacity of memory,

of how much you could
fit on a disc,

and then the capacity
and performance of chips

to know how well you could
make things look or move

with that ability of the chips.

But I had lost
faith in 3DO,

because, really, it was
an underpowered system.

And at that time...
So, this is in '92, '93...

I started to hear rumblings that Sony
was considering building their machine.

And that was a real consumer
electronics player, right?

Like, not just a video game
company, not a small Coleco,

not a dedicated game company,
like Sega or Nintendo,

but a big media and consumer
electronics powerhouse

was getting into the industry.

PlayStation came from
the word "work station"

a computer with a large screen

and multiple programs installed

so the user can do a variety of work.

These aren't specialist devices.

Similarly, the PlayStation would

be able to play a variety of games.

We wanted to do not just games

but also work with
music and communications.

the name of the device became PlayStation.
Given these requests

So, the original specification
for the PlayStation

was taking some real-time
3D chipset technology

that had been developed
in something called System G.

And System G was a real-time
3D toolset for broadcast television,

for the kind of rotating,
spinning graphics

that you would see on sports
programs or news programs.

Live television, basically.

And that was
a couple of engineers

who were really quite advanced
in thinking about real-time 3D,

and what that could mean in
the home got Ken very excited.

And then, marrying that

with Sony's obvious prowess
in CD and CD-ROM technology.

And they also had
an in-house experience

with building computers
based on MIPS processors,

so they were able to draw on
two or three different technologies.

Obviously, sound was a strong
part of Sony's background.

And they brought all of those
technologies together

into the one device.

The guts of the machine
was fairly off-the-shelf parts,

in terms of using
a RISC chip, 3000A,

and other components.

But the secret sauce was some of
the bespoke elements that we added.

So we had a special sound chip,

and with the graphics chip, the GPU,
we had special hardware to handle things

like geometry transforms.
There was GTE.

And also, some bespoke math
as well. Some special caches.

And on the CPU as well,
we had extra hardware support

for actually rendering
movies in real-time.

So streaming those
off the disc as well.

And the idea that you
could have a MIPS processor

in a home console...

Never mind in a workstation.
In a home console.

And on top of that, have 3D graphics
functionality and amazing audio...

It was nuts.

This was Sony's and PlayStation's
first entrance into the market.

And, of course, you had Sega
and Nintendo, who were fantastic,

knew what they were
doing as well.

And I think... If you are
going to enter a new market,

you have to do things
differently.

We knew we needed the
best creators on the platform

to make the best
games possible.

There was
a need to pursue

a positive, a proactive
relationship with third parties,

which in the world
of Nintendo and Sega

was seen as really
a thorn in their side.

You know, like mosquitoes,

that really just got in
the way of shelf space

that they could've had for
their super rock star developers,

their in-house people.

So, it was clear that

without some anchor, tentpole
titles from our first-party studios,

we had to rely totally on other
people's money, other people's support.

PlayStation seemed
to have a hit list

of all the people they
needed to get on board,

in order to have
a great launch here.

They spoke to everybody,
and they made sure

that there was
no barrier to entry.

They went to Konami, they
went to Namco, they went to Irem.

They went to all these
companies and they said,

"Here's what we want to do.
We want you involved."

And after people dealing with
Nintendo, who could be quite tricksy,

this was a breath
of fresh air.

The fact that
Namco was dominating

the arcade scenes
at the time

meant there was a huge,
rich early portfolio

of tried and tested
video game experiences,

which were incredibly
important to Sony

in terms of working towards trying
to adopt those onto the PlayStation.

I went along with them, meeting all these
developers and other employees

and my role there was to take notes
for everyone.

That was before everything.

When the PlayStation had just
got its start as a business

these meetings were very important
for Sony.

I think that my name is probably
on each set of notes there.

That was another one of my jobs then.

And they talked about the
technology that they would want,

they would talk about the
business model that they want.

And we quite quickly
evolved this mantra

that if we as a platform can be
the creative choice of the developers

and the commercial choice
of the publishers,

then we have a chance
of success.

And we got feedback from a
number of the companies saying,

"If you get
to a million units,

"then we will
support you."

And I think that
was set as a target

that was impossible in their
mind for Sony to achieve.

And so, we promised that we
would do a million units in Japan.

And then we had some other
conversations that were much more mundane,

but, actually, possibly
even more impactful.

In the graphics chip
of the PlayStation One

is a unique graphics mode.

And the only reason
that graphics mode is there

is to allow Capcom to more easily port
their arcade games to the PlayStation.

Sega and Nintendo
had a decade or more

to develop an in-house
development capability.

Sony had very little.

Just a little bit
from Electronic Publishing,

some from Psygnosis,
and one or two in Japan.

The rationale behind
the acquisition of Psygnosis

was that Sony Imagesoft
in the US

was looking for more
and more development talent

for its games.

Psygnosis had developed
some really clever technology

to do with streaming of data
and video from CD-ROMs,

initially working on devices
like the FM Towns in Japan,

but then also on Sega CD,

which Sony
was a big supporter of,

because it used our CD
manufacturing capabilities.

And so, Psygnosis was eventually
acquired by the US division of Sony

in the early part of 1993,

and then they were one
of the early developers

who were helping
to create games

at the beginning
of PlayStation.

And Sony, actually, at the
time, didn't do acquisitions.

I think we were about their
eighth acquisition lifetime.

We were sold to by Olaf Olafsson
and Mickey Schulhof,

who clearly had
a passion to innovate.

We didn't know why they had
this passion to innovate at the time.

Anyway, the transaction
completed.

A couple of weeks later,
we're on a plane to Tokyo,

and we're introduced
to this...

I can only describe it
as a busted photocopier.

A huge cabinet with chips
and wires hanging out of it,

bit of a controller, and the
famous dinosaur's head.

So, we looked at this
strange piece of hardware,

and, of course,
it lit up for me.

We just couldn't wait
to get our hands on this thing.

And it became very clear early
on that it was slightly ill-conceived

for mass-market development
and deployment

into the development
community.

And also the hardware itself
was a bit odd in some ways,

because it had really been designed
as using the CD like a pseudo cartridge.

So, you put the CD in,
you load the game,

you take the CD out.

That wasn't where we thought
that piece of hardware should go.

So, we recommended
up-spec'ing the CD.

More memory.

Which was well-received by the
engineers in Japan, I have to say.

Ken Kutaragi,
in particular.

So the PlayStation
started to take shape.

Ian would always come in and
say excited things, like, you know,

he's seen amazing technology
at some meeting

or some conference or whatever.

But I remember everyone
getting very excited about

the delivery
of this new item.

And it was huge,

and it was covered in fans,
just strapped to it.

And it made a hell of a noise
when you fired it up.

And it was the very first
dev kit of the PlayStation.

So, they did their homework.

It wasn't just that they knew what
kind of machine needed to be built.

It wasn't just that they knew what
kind of services they needed to provide.

They knew which partners
they needed to target.

And that's the hardest
thing of all. And they nailed it.

Our approach was to
be as open as we could

to be hands-on,
to go and visit them,

to create
developer conferences,

and really act in a way that
maybe hadn't been seen before,

in terms of actually
helping developers understand

what we wanted to do, and
helping them to get there as well.

I was inspired by what I had experienced
at the 3DO developers' conference

in San Francisco, or near
San Francisco, in late 1992.

And what I saw was,
for the first time,

they were treating the creators
like rock stars.

And they realized that
the creative community

was more important than talking
to the execs of the publishers.

And we took the same model,
we expanded upon it,

and we focused a lot of our efforts
on making great developer tools,

and making the developer
experience the best that it could be,

because we know that creative
people have a choice.

They can choose what
platforms to work on,

and they can choose which
platforms to put their best people on.

And we knew that if we could make
working on PlayStation a great experience,

we would get the best people, and
the best people make the best games.

Sony was going around talking to the
Capcoms and the Konamis of the world.

I believe we were lumped into
that group of meetings,

and in that, someone came
to the Sony Music offices,

where we were working
at Sony Imagesoft,

from Sony and said,
"Here's this VHS tape.

"This is what
PlayStation is

"and this is what Sony's
going to be making,

"and you guys are now going to be
putting all your stuff on PlayStation."

And that tape was wild.

Jurassic Park
was huge at the time.

Everybody talked
about the dinosaur,

and when you actually saw it
in real-time in 3D,

for the time, you were like,
"Holy cow, this is amazing."

Sony gave us this demonstration
of a dinosaur. It was a T-rex head.

And they told us how it would move around
in real-time CG.

Of course, we were making games
at the time, but we were also film fans,

and the CG in Jurassic Park
had made a huge impact.

To see the same kind of visual depictions
from Jurassic Park,

actually moving around
in Sony's Tyrannosaurus demo,

on this platform called PlayStation.

That left a very lasting impression on us.

As a viewer of the tape,
we're envisioning

"It's going to be that dinosaur
fighting a pterodactyl,

"and there's going to be
beautiful waterfalls in lush jungles,"

and it's like, "Well, actually,
everything the PlayStation can do

"is just to make that dinosaur
against a black background.

"It can't do anything else.

"But we want to at least show you
that we can do this cool dinosaur."

But then it went on
to show you actual games,

either in development
or proof of concepts.

And it showed Jumping Flash!

And that was the first time
I'd ever actually thought

that you could break the
bounds of that, really, at the point,

getting very tired, stale, 2D,
side-scroll way of expressing a game,

and suddenly you have
this massive verticality

and this robot rabbit
is jumping

what seemed to be
thousands of feet in the air.

And there was a JRPG and it
looked like a hand-drawn cartoon.

And when they went into
battle sequences,

it was like you were watching
an anime sequence

of like, camera cuts
and beautiful effects.

That was what got me
excited enough to say,

"This industry's about
to get super exciting,

"because it feels now
like you can express games

"in a much more dynamic and
exciting and cinematic way,"

that really, before I knew
much about pure game design,

just at a surface level, it was like,
"Wow, that is so crazy exciting,"

that this tape is basically
saying to us,

"Hey, game creators,
we are about to allow players

"to literally step
into these worlds."

How many colours you could use

was always a question then.

Moving into an era

where you could use all these colours

as well as polygons and textures

really was like a dream to me.

If felt that if I could do all that

then I could make the 3D Metal Gear

that I had wanted to

since the days of the MSX
but was unable to.

Though changing the colouring
was a scary idea.

When I saw the PlayStation presentation

I saw that I would be able

to make the game that I really wanted

with a full set of colours and polygons.

That idea was really shocking to me.

I mean in a positive sense of the word.

When I heard that Sony,

a company known for audio
and electronics equipment,

was making a game console,

I was both excited and anxious to see
what they would come up with.

Then when I saw this machine

with its CD-ROM drive,

and the 3D polygon visuals,

it was a completely different approach
to what had come before

and revolutionized the industry.

I think if Sony had not entered
the console market at that time

then it would be totally different today.

When I saw what they came up with,

with the CD-ROMs and the polygons,

it felt like a brand new approach
to games.

You just wanted
everybody to say,

"I want to be part of this
project because it is the future."

And I think 99%-plus people
bought in on that basis.

You didn't have
to sell it to them

and they didn't feel like
they were taking a risk.

Three, two, one. Go!

Wow. What a start!

This is just what
I wanted to see.

Working
on the magazines,

we used to get things
like Login and Famitsu,

and I remember the first time the
Ridge Racer screenshots appeared.

And you knew then
it was a game-changer.

You knew then that this
was a proper 3D console.

This was something that...

It wasn't faking 3D,

like the FX chip on the
Super Nintendo or Mode 7.

There was a camera
that was panning around things.

The cars in Ridge Racer
were going past you,

and it wasn't a 2D sprite.

And it was... It just blew
you away. It was incredible.

Yes, I remember at the time,

being asked to demo a sample

to various development companies.

This was met with
some shock and awe.

Reactions such as,
'wow, they can really do this...'

I was aware at the time
that other companies

had studied the demo really closely.

I think that it was a massive success,
as a sample.

We learned what we can do with hard work.

We needed to make better games,
and so did Namco.

I think that this was a great development.

The initial SDK was certainly quite large

around this size, and it was heavy too.

Sony sent it to the game companies
in March of 1993.

A number of game companies said

that they wouldn't be able

to make games for the PlayStation

if Sony didn't have the SDK out

by the final day of March.

And so it wound up

that the final day of March
was our due date.

I remember us completing
and delivering it.

The machines were hand-made

and we couldn't send them

via a home delivery service

due to their weight, size

and large power source.

This meant that
we delivered them ourselves

taking taxis and bullet trains to do so.

3 or 4 of those were around 30 kg

but we brought them to the game companies.

There were actually some people

that flew all the way to the US with them.

It was quite clear that people
were excited about it,

and there were a lot of loose lips as
people started getting the hardware.

And Psygnosis, for example,
were very vocal on what it could do.

And everyone just started
talking about 3D.

You know, previously
3D had been pseudo 3D.

But all of a sudden, you know, you
had people who were talking about

the possibilities that were
afforded by this new hardware

where 3D was incredibly easy,
comparatively, to what had gone before.

So, yeah, 3D was a huge,
huge part of it.

And it wasn't like,
you know,

when you used to get things like
F-18 Interceptor and stuff like that,

and it would be a jerky plane
made out of about 15 polygons.

No, you were talking about platform
games that were made out of 3D items,

and it was just revolutionary,
really strong.

It drew triangles for you.

Whereas prior to that, every other 3D
game that had come out on any platform

that had tried to draw a
triangle and fill it in with a texture

had had to do that
in software.

So the CPU is sat
there, going, "Right,

"there's a red dot there, a
blue dot there, blah, blah, blah."

Suddenly with the PlayStation,
you just go,

"Here's the three corners of my
triangle, here's my texture, draw it."

Bang, and it's on screen,
perfect for you, projected into 3D.

You know, it's like, wow, that's
taken so much of the difficulty away

and allowing you to do something
you've not been allowed to do before.

In our first work

to try and help developers
succeed on PlayStation,

the main problem, I think, we
were teams who were new to 3D,

and who'd already been working
maybe on 2D titles for years,

but PlayStation was maybe
the first leap into this new era.

And you needed
a good grasp of math

to cope with vectors
and matrices transformations.

Quaternions,
and otherwise exciting things...

And if you didn't have the
basic math to do that kind of stuff,

you couldn't code
in 3D anymore.

So, it was quite
a step change.

A lot of our peer group

just went away from
the games industry,

at that transition
from 2D to 3D.

Working with 3D changes
everything.

Just to give an example,

in the 2D world, what you could
see of the world was restricted.

It was just what was within
the boundaries of the TV set.

With a 3D world,
with perspective,

you can see everything
that's in the distance.

And so, I remember
going to a trade show,

and the poor team
that was making a game

hadn't realized that this
was a fundamental rule of 3D.

You had to restrict
what was visible.

And so they had a long, long canyon
that ran at a few frames a second,

because they were trying
to display the whole thing.

And as you'd walk
down the canyon,

the frame rate would get
better and better and better

until it would be
at interactive rates

when you were at the very end
of it and couldn't see anything.

And this was just the basics.

We had to learn to make worlds
with lots of crooked geometry in them,

so that these views
to infinity didn't occur.

It's like suddenly being offered a
whole new medium to create stuff in.

For many people that's
actually completely unnerving.

And that's really how I
remember that transition.

I remember actually being very
excited about creating artificial worlds

in a different way than the
pixel-bashing days of yore.

I think it ultimately comes down to
the fact that we live in a 3D world,

so that's what
we're used to.

There are things
in the distance,

we go and explore,
we look around.

It's what kids do. You
run around, you explore,

you find hiding places,

play hide and seek... You
make dens, you climb trees.

All those sorts of things.

And that was a chance
for us to do that in games.

You know, you've got
to remember that,

perhaps from a
programmer's point of view,

going into the 3D world
would've been a difficult transfer,

but for an artist, it was
probably the opposite.

Because we always wanted
to push what we could do.

We always wanted more,

we always wanted
to display more,

we wanted to make things
more visually elaborate.

We wanted a 3D environment.

So, in some respects, from the
early days, right up until Tomb Raider,

there were more constraints
if anything else.

Our world was opening up.

It got easier
for us to develop.

Our ideas would...

We could put those concepts
onto screen, and a lot easier,

the more that the software
developed through the years.

There was the technical aspects
of the 3D, which were brutal.

But even worse was how
it works with the gameplay.

Because, essentially, if
you think of what's going on

in a classic 2D character action
game like Donkey Kong Country,

is you've got a character
moving one or two-dimensionally,

like, on the screen,

and then they're doing
timing-related things,

like jump, jump, jump, spin,

you know, kick, or whatever.

Jump, jump, leap on the thing,
ride the thing over, jump.

And it's all
about the constraint.

Because of the 2D-ness, it's very
easy to make it so that your only choices

were to either, like, jump
on that barrel or fall in the pit.

Or jump on the barrel

or ride on that moving
platform, or fall in the pit.

In 3D, it turns out,
because of the extra dimension,

there are several huge problems.

There's basically the fact that,

okay, you are in a field and there's
a monster running towards you,

and nothing really prevents you
from just running around it.

That can't really happen in 2D,

because that "around" is the
dimension that's in and out of the screen

that you don't get
in the 2D game.

But in the 3D game, you're
looking at it the other way

and it's the left-right
dimension,

but it's the extra dimension.

It doesn't matter
which way it is.

It's just the extra dimension. It gives
you too much degrees of freedom.

So you've got that problem,
you've got the camera problem,

which makes judging the jumps
and the timing

much, much more difficult
depending on what the point of view is.

And the point of view
is not so set.

On the 2D one, there's
only one logical point of view,

which is perpendicular to...

In the third dimension
that you're not actually using.

In the 3D game,

the camera is in the same three
dimensions as the actual game.

And where is it? Is it behind the
character, the side of the character,

is it changing, is it moving?

What happens if you start
to curve and go sideways?

And there was no example
of how to handle this.

And so we had
to figure it all out.

Capcom had only very recently
started using 3D graphics

so we began our work by first thinking

about how we could go about using them.

Our benchmark was that T-Rex demo
that Sony came out with.

We took quite a number of approaches

from working as hard as we could to
replicate what they had put out

to thinking that it would actually be
a bad move

to approach Resident Evil
like they did T-Rex.

We really were starting from zero there.

It just wouldn't display

so the idea of going full 3D

just wasn't going to get much traction.

With things going like this

it started feeling like
it could get cancelled.

When Alone in the Dark came out

it had a large quantity

of pre-rendered graphics displayed.

The only object was the character itself.

From the player perspective

the game had
a three-dimensional atmosphere

and all of this demonstrated

that it was now possible

to create a more complete game

including visually.

From there, we steadily moved
onto animation methods.

By deciding to use camerawork
to show a 3D space in 2D,

Mikami-san established the blueprint
for what would become Resident Evil.

Essentially, the idea was

that there would be zombies

that were located in places

that the camera didn't reach.

The player couldn't see them

but they could hear them.

There was a certain scariness

in zombies being out of sight.

This type of fear was sort of

the main concept for the game.

I imagined the player

growing very jumpy about everything

and being on the edge of their seat.

Where they would be able to sense

that there was a zombie

just around the corner.

The camera marks...

Well, I did set the cameras,

but I didn't have any experience
shooting with a real camera.

I started learning from step one,

imagining how a player going
through a corridor would feel,

which camera angles would frighten them.

That's how I went about it.

If we get down to the technical details,

a single room could only have 8 cameras...

You really remember this well!

Due to reasons of memory capacity.

This doubled to 16 for Resident Evil 2.

There were just 8 for the first game.

You only had so many cuts

and you had to make the game playable,

without leaving any blind spots in the
room where the character can't be seen.

First time I ever
saw Resident Evil,

the guy from Virgin
brought in a disc,

and he went, "Just have a look at
this." He didn't say anything else.

And we were
all watching it,

and you get that bit where
the first zombie turns around

and you go, "Yeah, brilliant."

And then, all of a sudden,
you're walking along a hallway

and the dog jumps
through the window.

And two of my team left,

and then one of them came back

just as the spider
fell from the ceiling,

and immediately turned
and walked out again.

It was one of the most exciting
games that I knew was coming out.

It was one that really,
really blew me away.

This is RuptureFarms.

They say it's the biggest meat
processing plant on Oddworld.

I wasn't really interested in
games at all, in making them.

The idea never
occurred to me.

And it still didn't occur to me until I
was in the film business for a while,

and I was looking at how do I take
my desire to create virtual worlds,

meaning fantasy worlds
or worlds of the imagination,

and convert that
using 3D computer graphics

into stories I want to tell, into
characters that I'd like to develop,

and into money
I'd like to make.

And that's what
transitioned my brief history,

let's say seven years of
computer animation traditionally,

into wanting to start
a video game company.

Now, I hadn't seen
a PlayStation yet,

but it gave me
the faith to say,

"Okay, this stuff
is getting real,

"and I understand Hollywood
enough, I believe,

"to understand what I think is
going to happen with video games."

And that really gave me
the inertia to say,

"If we don't do it now, we're
not going to be able to later."

And so, that was '90...

'92, I started convincing
Sherry McKenna

we need to start
a game company.

Lorne comes to my house
in the Hollywood Hills,

and we're sitting
by the pool because I'm...

Hollywood

And, Lorne says, "You know,
I've got this just really great idea."

And I go, "Okay, tell me
what it is," 'cause I love stories.

So he tells me
this awesome idea.

I'm telling you,
it was such a great idea.

And it was just like a reflection of
what was going wrong with the world.

The Glukkons were scared,
'cause profits were grim.

And I went, "Oh, man, this is so
awesome. We could make five movies!"

And he goes, "Yeah, no,
we're going to do five games."

And I went, "Games?
What are games?"

He goes, "You know, video
games?" And I went, "No, I don't know."

And then I saw
the PlayStation.

And I thought, "I don't know.
Maybe we can do...

"Maybe we could do really good
computer graphics for video games."

...when some Big Face
appeared and said I was dead.

Said our land was changing,

was imbalanced at best.

He told me my fate
was to rescue the rest.

When we actually started
the production of the game,

we had two types of people.

We had people that had come
with us from Hollywood,

and then we had people that were
acquired through the game industry.

And with Sherry,

I would tell her the stories
and we would talk about it,

and at a certain point,
she had said,

"Well, it's really... In games
today, aggression equals rewards.

"And what you're talking about, Lorne,
is really empathy can equal rewards."

And I was like, "That's
it! That's the mark.

"And I think
if we can do that,

"then we can bring
a wider audience to gaming

"and still have the challenging
aspects that make gaming great.

"But we can bring a bit more
of the epic storytelling to it.

"And a bit more
of Hollywood production design,

"and Hollywood
animation values."

I'm telling a story.

Oddworld's games
are going to be about a story,

and the vehicle that we're
going to use to tell that story

is going to be a video game.

And in those days, the only way
to do it was with the cut scenes.

So, to tell the story,
which is all I care about...

Touching people.

You can't do it
in a side-scroller

where they're bombing
and killing and...

No, it's about
telling a story.

So, those cinematics,
those cut scenes,

yeah, they had to be the same quality
as when I came from that industry.

Hmm?

Well, I rescued Mudokons,
but who's going to rescue me?

gameplay and cut scenes were separate.

Cut scenes were like movie scenes

with the characters and backgrounds

being entirely rendered separately.

I didn't want to do it like this.

I wanted to make cut scenes

that used the game models as they were

to use those models and the camera

to tell a story to the player.

That is what I wanted to do.

There was also the player being able

to control the camera as they played.

There could be rear or side view

3 cameras above that the player

could use to control the display

and give them a sense of control.

They could change things themselves

which made for richer gameplay

that was more film-like.

These are two ideas

that I had wanted to work on

when we made Metal Gear Solid.

It could be said that these have

turned into a sort of standard for us.

Even though some film-like techniques

or cuts had been used in games
up until then

the lack of camera meant each frame

had to be created individually.

These images couldn't be manipulated.

That's how it was then.

Where 3D polygons are used

the player can also move the camera.

This was the first time that we were

able to work with cameras like this

rather than just set angles.

This made me extremely happy

as I love movies and knew

about these techniques and ideas

and we could now use these processes

to accomplish previously impossible things

Of course, in the beginning,

most people were
used to playing 2D games.

The tempo of these games
was very different.

With the shift to 3D,

what were 2D images,
now had depth.

Consequently, the camera
became pivotal

and it was down to the player
to gauge distances.

It was very difficult for a player

to work out timings and when to brake

until they got used to it.

With earlier games,

it was easy for players to follow the
extension of a straight line,

so we made adjustments with
the 3D games to keep them interesting.

For example, when taking a corner,

centripetal force acting on the car

pulls it out around the curve,

so we wrote a program
to intentionally

pull the car back in
and control its movements.

This was pretty much everybody's
first experience with 3D,

and so we were all trying to
figure out what the rule set is.

How do you even
make a game in 3D?

And everybody
had a different approach.

With Naughty Dog and Crash,
they had the approach that

they would keep
the camera on rails,

and they would
calculate beforehand

every polygon that needed to be
displayed for every point in the path.

And as a result, they could
have really amazing graphics

because there was no wastage.

If that polygon was needed,
it was displayed.

If it was hidden behind something
else, they could cut it out.

To some extent,
what they were doing was,

they were leveraging the
incredible size of a CD-ROM for this,

because only a CD-ROM
could hold that much data.

When it came to deciding
what kind of game

we ultimately wanted to make
FINAL FANTASY VII into,

we felt that it needed a large volume

of high-end movie cut scenes.

Not the real-time 3D graphics in the game,
but pre-rendered movies,

and CD rom media

would be needed for that.

We had decided what we most wanted to do
with the game,

and concluded that

we would need to use CD rom
to make that a reality.

Our tests and discussions
led to that result.

And that resulted in FINAL FANTASY VII

coming out on the PlayStation.

Well, for us, CD did provide a lot of
storage opportunities for developers.

Yeah, more than 650 megabytes,

which, compared to a cartridge
at the time, is immense,

and, in fact, even compared to the
hard disk on a PC, it was pretty vast.

Three, two, one.

Go!

The main thing, obviously, was the
CD audio that you could play as well.

If you look at the games,
especially like WipEout and so on,

they're known because
of their audio soundtrack.

Until CDs came along, most
music had been quite chip music-y,

and quite plinky-plonky
kind of sounds,

and having a CD-ROM
and WipEout

being able to play back
a proper full soundtrack,

you know, that you might have in your
car or on your headphones or whatever,

was something new.

For Twisted Metal, the
Speed soundtrack was just...

Speed was this movie
that was out at the time,

which was a wonderful movie,

and a great action soundtrack
that still holds up.

And it just blew my mind that
I could send that soundtrack

to the composer
for Twisted Metal and say,

"Hey, can we have a climax
level song that kind of evokes this?"

And suddenly, not only
do we get something back

that feels inspired by Speed,

but it's pure
symphonic quality sound

because it's streaming
directly off the CD.

For the PlayStation,
I think it was

exciting initially, just to realize
you had 24 audio channels.

So, they would be used
for sound effects mainly.

So you could play
24 sounds at once.

And it had built in reverb
and delay processing as well

that you could apply
to any of those voices.

So, that was great for things like, if
you were doing a basketball game,

it actually sounded
like you were in an arena,

rather than just silent
background noise,

and that's what I think it really
added, more depth to the sound.

Here we go.

The PlayStation was the first console

that could use pulse-code modulation.

That's where sound is
recorded and a sample loop created

with that loop being played afterwards
as the sound.

To record the car sounds in
Gran Turismo, we'd rent each one

and then record the engine in phrases,
starting with the idling sounds

We took these recordings
and made sample loops for each engine

making a tone quality
specific to each engine.

I remember now that when we played back

the cars sounds we had recorded

We started noticing things.

Like how the pitches would drop
in pitch the farther away they were.

Or rise in pitch
the closer they were...the blur effect.

Gran Turismo was probably the first game
to put these in a game, certainly.

You could have something that
sounded professional very quickly.

If you had some piece of music
that really fitted the game,

you were not restricted
to any limits

regarding fitting it into RAM
or anything like that.

or constraints
for memory or CPU.

You'd just say,
"Play this track."

So, you'd have something...

You know, a full orchestral
piece, if you wanted, in your game,

and you'd still have these other 24
channels of sound effects on top of it.

So that was really
why that big leap

between things like the
Mega Drive and the SNES,

is that you suddenly
had things that

sounded as good as if you were
just watching things on TV.

In the SNES era, the game screens were 2D,

and there were no voices of course,

and no cinematic movie scenes.

So you had to have music
with strong melodies.

Tunes that would still stand up,

even if you listened to them repeated
over and over.

I think our music composer,

Mr. Uematsu was also suitably aware
of this when he composed the score.

Mr. Uematsu said this at the time.

When the CG animation became more 3D
with the PlayStation,

and the cinematic movie scenes
became more dramatic,

the visuals had a much greater impact.

And paradoxically,
if you used the same melodies,

the same logic for making music
as in the SNES era,

then the music and the visuals would jar,
and clash with each other terribly.

This would stop the scene from coming
together and lose its effectiveness.

So when we showed strong visuals,
we would make the music more reserved,

or for moments where
the characters' emotions were high,

we would ramp up the music.

I remember feeling how
that balancing between

soft and hard had changed
from the SNES era.

So in the field of music too,

the way games used music
had become closer to film or video,

the way background music is added
in films.

I think the way games were made probably
changed to have an awareness of that.

It was clear that the potential
was there, which was fabulous.

So, obviously,
the big question was,

"How much will
the PlayStation cost

"and will Sony
be able to market it,

"and get a foothold in a market that's
dominated by Nintendo and Sega?"

That was certainly
a lot of the sentiment,

that, "Oh, Sony, really?"

But I think there were also some
people internally that thought,

"Well, okay, maybe they can't, but
they are a consumer electronics company.

"Maybe they have the insight
that we don't know."

But over time, we heard they
were making deals with Namco,

with some of these other
really good IP companies.

We started learning a little bit
about the toolsets that they're using

and how people
are developing for it.

And that's when
you started to really worry.

When Sony introduced
the PlayStation,

there was a graveyard of
consumer electronics companies

who had tried to enter
the multimedia business

or the interactive
entertainment business.

And so, a lot of those companies
had got some nice technologies,

but not the best
technologies.

But very few got

the combination
of technology,

business model
and creativity right.

Everybody learns from
everybody else's failures.

So, I was very worried

about Sony bringing out
a game system,

and I thought there was
a very good likelihood

that they were going
to be successful.

Obviously, Sega was a significant
competitor and competitive threat

to PlayStation.

Introducing Sega Saturn.

Hit it.

Sega's next generation
gaming platform.

There initially was
a lot of excitement around it,

and we were running
systems in there,

and we were able to see these
incredible, almost call them prototypes,

being run on this system.

And we thought, "Wow.
You know, if we do that,

"we will absolutely corner
the market on this.

"We will be
the console system."

And Sega clearly had
an advantage

in their rich heritage
and history of arcade games.

And so, they could port
Virtua Fighter from the arcade

straight onto
the Sega Saturn,

and that would be a great title for
them to introduce the platform with.

But then we saw Tekken,
and then we thought, "Oh, no."

Because, you know, again,
being a consumer-facing company,

what are the consumers
going to see?

They don't care that Virtua
Fighter is a full 3D arcade port.

What they do is, they look
at Tekken and they go, "Wow.

"Look at how that looks.
It looks so realistic."

You know, "I can see the face,
and it looks like a real person."

Of Namco's polygon games at that time,

our game became the model
for many other companies.

I've heard that said often.

I don't think this was because
the design was interesting.

Rather, it was the paradigm shift
in polygon technology,

from a 2D to a 3D world.

It was this intense evolution
of polygon technology

which brought about our success.

So,
we thought, "Oh, no,

"we need to look at
product a little deeper."

Also, I would say
the biggest thing for us

and the most
disappointing thing for us

was when Sega took
that first step forward

and announced a really high
price-point for the Sega Saturn.

And that kind of punched us
in the gut a little bit,

and we thought, "Oh, no, they
might be able to beat this price."

I'm going to talk to my
parents about this one.

I like this one, a lot.

You better
tell them it's $399.

I'll tell them.
I'll try.

In Japan,

Nakayama-san and others felt
that we had to really get Saturn out

well before the Sony machine
was launched.

And so, that was why
they pushed very hard

to introduce it earlier than
it was ready to be introduced,

before we had enough
hardware manufactured

and before we had enough
software ready to play on it.

The decision was, "We've
got to get out before Sony does

"so we better hurry
things along."

Now you may return to
the world as you know it.

And remember,
look for Sega Saturn.

It's out there.

So, the run-up to the launch
of PlayStation in Japan

was a fantastically
exciting time,

because you had this new
business, this new platform,

and all of the promise
and excitement around that.

But still a certain
amount of disbelief

or lack of credibility
in the marketplace.

Shortly before the introduction
of PlayStation in Japan in 1994,

to give confidence to the publishing
and developer community in Japan,

we announced that
we would be

the sole distributor and
publisher of everybody's software,

so that they had
a way of getting

to retail shops
and getting into the market.

With CD-ROMs you can manufacture

a certain number in a week

so in order to ship large quantities

you needed to begin the process
ahead of time

and build up your stored copies.

Game companies want to spend

as much time as they can on development

so they like to wait until the final week

before beginning production.

There could also be bugs in the game

so both Sony and the publishing company

need to test for that.

Sony has several dozen people do this.

But this was Sony's first game console

so they had no idea
how to test for these things.

We created the system for this

hired the personnel

and carried it out

all in the final three months
before release.

There were a lot of things
that we had to do

during those final three months

that were new for us at Sony.

And we had a program to
get to 100,000 units, day one.

That was a milestone that
we wanted to get to in Japan,

so that that would be
a real big number

that we could talk about
in the games press

and talk about
in the business press

to show that
we were serious.

And to make 100,000 units of a
PlayStation was no small undertaking.

The maximum number of units

for a Sony product

such as the Walkman

on the day of release

was 5,000 or 6,000 units.

If you wanted to put out 20,000 units

you would be told that it was too many

The idea was to begin production slowly.

Sony couldn't move slowly
with a game console.

Companies were getting ready
to release games.

Hardware has no value without its software

so if a company is aiming to publish

100,000 copies of a title

then at a minimum

you need 100,000 consoles ready.

Given this,
we needed to produce the PlayStation

In mass quantity,
right from the beginning.

This was completely different

than Sony's usual approach at the time.

Also, we needed to have the consoles

delivered to stores all on the same day

in order to stimulate game sales.

So, it was just this great symbiosis
of clever people doing great things.

There were no boundaries
and there was no,

"Well, you're doing
the Japanese launch

"and we're doing this,
and you make the games."

It was just this big, flat, enthusiastic,
you know, committed team of people.

We had, I think, six or seven
games available, day one.

Everyone remembers
Ridge Racer, and rightly so,

as being the game that was
probably the most exciting.

But then there was a whole host of
local Japanese content that came out

that really made the
PlayStation successful in Japan.

At one point, we had over 2,000
registered developers in Japan alone,

which shows you just the breadth
and depth of creator talent that we had.

The PlayStation was obviously
a much more powerful machine

and, you know, totally devoted
to, "Okay, let's build a machine

"where the focus is that
this will play games.

"This is built entirely
around playing games."

There was no kind of pretence
for, "This is a computer."

This is a games machine.
This is an arcade in your home.

That's the beginning
and the end of it.

All games gather here.

Full of games, PlayStation. Out now.

We had a hit.

We knew we were off and running
to a very, very strong start.

Lots of PlayStations
were exported from Japan

and brought home to the US
and the UK and Europe

by a lot of the
development community.

I would imagine at least 10,000 of
those 100,000 ended up going abroad.

You could buy a Japanese
PlayStation at the Computer Exchange

on Rathbone Place.

And they had a sign on the
window, "The Mutt's Nuts."

And the word was out.

And that actually made our job in
the US, in Europe, much, much easier,

because people
could see the machine,

they could see the excitement
that was coming out of Japan,

they could play the games,

and they could see the quality
of what was possible.

The hype machine
had already started

so people were champing
at the bit for it,

and I think what they did with the
price was the final nail in Sega's coffin,

because they undercut them
to such an extent.

It was the first E3,
and E3 was held in Los Angeles.

We had a very big booth.

We knew Nintendo would
have a big booth, and Sega.

Sony Computer Entertainment was
headed up by a fellow named Terry Tokunaka.

A very wise owl.

Typically a dignified Japanese who would
not say a word for, like, three hours,

and then say one or two words and that
was the end of the meeting, you know?

But he was smart.

We had a lot
of competing tensions.

The guys who were making
the hardware want it at margin,

the guys who were marketing
it want the lowest price possible.

You've got to look at what
the competition are doing.

And he was thinking about his cost
in yen and what the prices could be,

and the price debates
were 350, 399

and 299.

And they said,
"No, we can't do it."

"349." "We can't do it."

So, the senior management
from Japan left,

and then Olaf Olafsson stayed
behind with Steve Race.

Steve Race said,
"We've got to do 299.

"299 is the only
thing that matters.

"It's the only thing that
matters in the whole wide world.

"And if you don't want to be
embarrassed, you've got to be at 299."

So, Olaf said, "Hmm.
Let me think about it."

As far as pricing
is concerned,

the only thing we knew at the
time is what the bill of materials was.

So, then you have
to step away from that

and say, "Well, what
will the market stand?"

You know, "What's the right
price point for this thing?"

And I think, probably the guy who
was most influential in that was Olaf,

because people like Ken
and Terry Tokunaka

just wanted desperately
for this thing to be a success.

They know they've got
a great piece of hardware.

They know they've got
a great software catalogue.

Erm...

The only thing that can go wrong
now is they miss their market somehow.

And then,
we all went our way

and showed up the next morning for
the big press event at the E3 centre.

And they had a speech from
Nintendo and they had a talk from Sega,

and there might've been
something else.

It finally came up. "And now, Sony.
So, well, show us your stuff, Sony."

And they had all had,
like, 30 minute talks.

Steve Race gets up, walks up
to the podium and says, "299."

Walks off.

The place erupts.

I'm going to ask Sony Computer
Entertainment President of America,

Steve Race, to join me
for a brief presentation.

299.

It was the thing that was needed,
especially for the US market,

where the competition
was even stronger

than I was worried
about in Europe.

I mean, you had
these two monoliths,

and every third attempt into the
market had been squashed very easily.

I think that decision was
probably the right decision.

Probably a bit scary
when you look at the PandL,

but it was the right decision.

It set our intent
as a platform

and it completely destroyed
the competition.

My reaction was,
"Oh, shit, we're in trouble."

That this is a bad thing for Sega
and a very good thing for Sony.

We started to see
the response from retailers

in the United States, in Europe,

and starting to forecast
what our launch was going to be.

And we started to see the volume
that was starting to be forecast.

- The games are ready.
- Are you?

And I knew that we were
doing something special.

I knew that what we were doing

was not only reaching the
creators and the developers,

but this was starting to
permeate into the mass market.

But we knew that it was
risky days, you know.

We knew that we had games
to get us out the door,

keep us going
for a few months,

but the library
had to be built.

And therefore, it probably
wasn't for a year or so in

until we could look back and see that,
actually, yes, we were getting traction.

We could see the pipeline
of games was filling up,

and we could see developers
really coming on board then.

That gave me some confidence
that I had made a good career choice.

It was a wonderful thing
for the games business,

because it was a real
shot in the arm.

It unlocked everybody again.

It hit reset
on all of the sequels,

and people just trying to keep
washing the dishes at that point.

We all get to hit reset and start
again, and here's new hardware.

And anyone that wanted
to compete against Sony

had to show up with pretty
impressive hardware.

So it kind of...
It moved the industry along.

I like those kind of disruptions.
I think it's very helpful.

Very quickly, we had a really
rich variety of games.

People were taking the 3D
abilities of the machine

and sending it off
in lots of different directions,

from an NBA basketball game
through to Jumping Flash!,

the Japanese platform game,
which was just gorgeous.

Ready to go?

Sony would get in every game
ever published for PlayStation.

And so, we would have this
cabinet of just everything.

And it was just, you know...

The games you would expect...

You know, the Madden,
the GameDays, whatever.

And then, it was obscure
shit from Japan

that you're like,
"What is this?" Right?

And the two things I remember

was this game called something
like Super Big Brother,

is what it was translated.

And it was
a side-scrolling game

with digitized characters
like Mortal Kombat arcade,

but they were these buff,
almost naked dudes,

shooting shit out of their,
like, penises.

Three, two, one, go!

We laughed and laughed
about this game.

And then there was a wonderful
game that was called...

I think it was called
Incredible Crisis.

And it was just a collection
of mini-games,

but the way they had done it

was it was tied together
in the story

of this Japanese salaryman
and him dealing with his family,

and dealing with his... I think, like,
his teenage daughter and his wife.

And it was the first time I had played
a game where it was fully interactive,

so it wasn't just like
cut scenes, but it was...

It was really cool.

They told this very
mundane story...

Not totally mundane.
There was crazy shit happening.

But, you know, for video games
it was a very simple story

about just this guy,
this mild-mannered guy,

with these crazy mini-games.

We never got things like that
in America. It was just too weird.

But I loved seeing
a lot of those...

For us, obscure
Japanese games

when they would come
into the Sony offices.

Battle Arena Toshinden
was the first 3D fighting game

that we had on the console.

Tekken, which came along, which
is still amazing, still felt very 2D.

It's still very much that Mortal
Kombat, Street Fighter kind of...

Even though there's some
fantastic finishing sequences,

where Law would
run up the body

and then come down
and there was 3D within that.

It was Battle Arena Toshinden
that truly showed off the early 3D

gaming potential.

Gran Turismo. For me, one of the
greatest driving games ever made.

What an impact,
what depth, what realism.

What addiction. I played that for
18 months solid, two hours a day,

and I still don't think
I completely nailed it.

Then there was
PaRappa the Rapper,

which is just so weird,
and nuts and wonderful.

And Vib-Ribbon. See,
Vib-Ribbon is the kind of game

that you'd never have seen
in the cartridge years.

Who would have taken a chance
on a game like that?

But here we were in the '90s
with vectors on the screen.

You know, lines. And
it's like, it's cool, it's great.

I remember
playing Driver.

At the time, I was like,
"This is unbelievable,"

because I hadn't played
that kind of style of game

where the police
are chasing me before.

And I found it so fun.

And that's the kind of thing, again,
that the new generations deliver for us.

It was the first real open-world
driving game, was Driver.

And it required new techniques,
such as streaming the data,

the geometric and texture data
off the CD drive in real-time,

so it didn't stop, pause,
load and carry on.

And I think we really...
We pushed the machine hard.

It was smoking by the time
we'd done with it.

But the very early
development stages of Driver,

it was very, very touch-and-go

whether we could achieve it,
the open world.

Because most games at the time

were designed along,
basically, a tube.

You could see everything
in front of you

and you could control
what you couldn't see.

Driver, of course, you could
turn left or right at a junction.

It had to be aware
of what was there.

It was controlling other cars in
the city and people walking around.

The speed at which we were able
to grow the development community,

particularly in the West,

was down to embracing
the PC creators.

The PlayStation
development kit

actually became a card
that just slotted inside a PC.

And so, a lot of the tools and techniques
and capabilities of the PC developers

were able to come over to
PlayStation quite smoothly,

particularly in the areas
of advanced 3D graphics,

where obviously PlayStation
was positioning itself.

What was so nice
about the original PlayStation

was that it was more like
a PC than a console.

That's what made it really,
really easy to develop for, as well,

because it had architecture that
was a processor, a graphics processor,

which was what PCs hadn't got
at that point, but they soon did.

And it just worked.

It just pulls across the PC code, and
the graphics engine pulled that across

to use the graphics hardware.

So, it was a very, very nice
machine to work on.

We didn't have to change any
designs to be console specific

because we created
everything on a PC.

We knew our limitations
on the PC.

Sometimes, things didn't quite work
out, or we could adjust it fairly quickly.

More so, things like how much we
could display on screen at one time.

And as an artist, that was a
fair bit of guesswork, really.

But, certainly,
even testing the games...

From our point of view,
when we created a level,

and output the game version,

everything we did
was on the PC,

to the point where,

when we came to testing the
game at the end of the project,

and we actually had to pick up
a PlayStation controller to do it,

that was a big
deal for me.

'Cause suddenly I had to try and
translate everything I'd been doing

on my keyboard
on the PC

to what I was doing
on the console.

And believe you me, they made
us test those levels on that console.

It was hard work.

The other side
to this whole thing

was the fact that women, once
you started playing Tomb Raider,

could associate with a female
character in a game.

Now that was something
we hadn't anticipated.

But we suddenly had a market
for female gamers as well.

Lara Croft,
without doubt,

the poster girl
for that generation.

And I think the character and
the personality of Lara Croft,

it started to take storytelling,

which is a feature of gaming that
has developed in sophistication

immeasurably over
the successive generations.

But, I think,
with Tomb Raider at the time,

the concept of storytelling
in video games

manifested itself
to a really meaningful extent

probably for the first time.

Part of the PlayStation experience
was it wasn't just big titles

like Crash or Tomb Raider
or the like,

but also these
conceptually driven...

You could almost call
them indie titles, like Xi,

which I think was sold
as Devil Dice in this country.

Or I.Q.: Intelligent Qube.

The jump from 16-bit to 32-bit
was so incredibly significant.

I just got it straight away. I knew
that this was going to be huge.

Metal Gear Solid, Final
Fantasy VII, Resident Evil,

Time Crisis, Dino Crisis.

Games would come out which
were just enormous for PlayStation.

The N64 was
a different experience

as that came up and
bubbled up halfway through.

But it didn't really take over.

Nintendo really dragged
its heels over getting into 3D

and launching
a new machine.

'Cause, you know,
for obvious reasons.

The Super Famicom, the SNES,
was doing great guns,

and it was reinvigorated by the
likes of Donkey Kong Country.

But at the end of the day,
it was still a cartridge system.

For every one launch
on the N64,

there were a dozen
PlayStation titles,

because they could just
bombard the market with it.

I remember in the early
days of PlayStation,

you would see somebody go in,
get the console,

and get, literally, a stack
of games to go with it.

Sony's marketing of the PlayStation
was, I thought, incredibly exciting.

It didn't necessarily
focus on games.

It just focused
on this kind of new world

that people were going to be
exploring and getting into.

And I think it was brilliant
at the time

because there was very controversial
elements to some of the marketing.

But it was something that really
captured people's imaginations,

in terms of, "This isn't just
a video games machine."

The US were very, very
traditional in everything they did.

I think there was an element of
free thinking that was in Europe.

Hello, citizens of Europe.

As spokesperson
for S.A.P.S.,

the Society
Against PlayStation,

I'd like to talk to you about a
menace threatening humanity.

We launched with
kind of a silly commercial,

a Reefer Madness
kind of concept.

The anti-PlayStation society,

the Society Against
PlayStation, S.A.P.S.

It will ruin your kid's brain and
they'll come out jabbering monkeys.

So, it was aimed at the parents
and really at the kids.

And here we have a fellow who's
been experimenting with PlayStation

for only a few minutes.

Proof that we S.A.P.S.
must be on our guard.

Remember, do not underestimate
the power of PlayStation.

You had some really,
really talented guys.

You know, Geoff Glendenning,
who's a really, really clever guy.

And he didn't just think posters,
print ads, that sort of thing.

He was looking at how he was
going to get all eyes on PlayStation.

When I'd seen the PlayStation,

I felt that the market couldn't
sustain three console companies,

and therefore,
I also believed

that with the technology,
with such a big leap,

that we could reposition it
to a much older market.

A lot of those people
had been gamers,

but had grown out of

where the market was
ostensibly targeting,

which was really children
of 16 and under, I'd say.

So, they were left with no form
of digital entertainment

other than music and film.

So I think PlayStation
kind of filled that gap.

But you were not going
to fill that gap

unless you associated with what
those people were doing at the time.

And at the time, you know,
the club scene was big.

There had been a massive youth
movement, if you like, in the UK.

Very much unique, globally,

that came out of the late '80s
kind of rave culture and club culture.

By 1994, 1995,

was the biggest youth movement
in the history of youth tribes.

If you put together
through the 20th century,

you know, the mods, the rockers,

the hippies, the New Romantics,
the skinheads.

Every youth movement came
nowhere near as close as the participants

who took part in club culture.

UK dance culture in the '80s
saw the birth of the rave scene.

And Ministry of Sound
came along in 1991,

and was civilized raving,
if you like.

Ministry of Sound, I guess,

was the best nightclub
in the UK and globally.

It had become a global brand
and it was taken from

the big New York warehouse
clubbing scene,

and Ministry of Sound was
the first super club, if you like.

But in 1995, they were
having a huge refit.

I wouldn't
call it upmarket,

but we had to remove the gaffer
tape and the scaffolding

and start to build
proper structures.

And we built two things.

One was an Absolut vodka bar
in conjunction with Absolut.

But there was another space,

and that was where the
intrigue and the idea started.

And that saw the birth of the famous
PlayStation room at Ministry of Sound.

This PlayStation room, which
was kind of just painted black,

with black consoles
and black TVs on pedestals,

and, you know,
you step down into it,

so it's almost like
going into a little lair.

And it seemed such
a natural thing to do,

to bring video gaming
into a club environment.

PlayStation really
made gaming cool.

Because, you know, you had two
brands that were huge and successful,

brilliant game designers,

but in the public perception, you
know, you had Mario and Sonic,

and they were perceived
as being very young.

And so, when you had
a grown-up brand like Sony

that made your mum
and dad's television

and your Walkman
and all the rest of it,

actually coming into the
market, it was exciting.

And I think, that, coupled
with the marketing at the time...

Suddenly, you'd open
a copy of The Face

and you'd see hip kids
wearing the PlayStation logo,

and they probably haven't
played a game in their life,

but if they're embracing the
brand as being something cool,

then that's kind of what made the
whole video games market explode, I think.

For me, the quintessential
PlayStation ad of all time

that still gets a good 10,000 hits
a month, written by James Sinclair,

headed up by Trevor Beattie
at TBWA, was Double Life.

For years
I've lived a double life.

In the day I do my job.

I ride the bus, roll up my
sleeves with the hoi polloi.

But at night, I live
a life of exhilaration.

Of missed heartbeats
and adrenaline.

And if the truth
be known...

A life of
dubious virtue.

I won't deny I've been
engaged in violence,

even indulged in it.

I have maimed
and killed adversaries,

and not merely
in self-defence.

I've exhibited
disregard for life...

Limb.
And property.

And savoured every moment.

You may not think
it to look at me...

But I have
commanded armies...

And conquered worlds.

And though in achieving
these things...

I have set morality aside...

I have no regrets.

It still gives me goosebumps
whenever I see it.

I think it's utterly timeless.

If you put it up now on TV,

it still would be as fresh
as it was back then.

It really captured
the tone perfectly.

You just had to see
the amplification effect

of all the marketing
and promotion,

and games was cool.

And we were now a
mainstream entertainment brand.

We were no longer a toy.

And it wasn't "geeks," and I say
that in the most respectful way.

Weren't geeks that
were playing games.

It was the "cool kids"
that were playing video games.

It was an amazing time
as a game creator

and as a game player.

That first PlayStation took
away so many of the limitations

that we'd had in the past.

Suddenly, cartridges... Didn't
have to worry about cartridges.

We had 600 megabytes
on the CD-ROM.

As far as hardware went,
powerful, and in 3D as well.

It was a revolution.

So the hardware team
behind PlayStation One...

As soon as the hardware
was finished,

they went on
to two new projects.

They went on to
a cost-reduction project,

which was same format, same capability,
but just making it cheaper and cheaper.

The second team,
the advance team,

then went
and started working on

a version of the PlayStation
chipset for the arcades.

Before the PlayStation
was released as a home console,

work was already underway on
Namco's System 11 arcade board.

This board incorporated some
of the PlayStation architecture,

such as the CPU, which was
developed by Mr. Kutaragi's team.

what Namco was most surprised by

was the cost, how cheap it was.

To be able to make something
with that capability

for that price, was pretty surprising.

What Mr. Kutaragi was
trying to do at that time,

by making a low cost polygon chip

available to the global market,

marked a paradigm shift
in the polygon era.

Although Namco had a board

with better polygon
technology and capabilities,

this was an interesting
business model for us,

and we continued
to work with Mr. Kutaragi.

And once that project
had been finished,

the team behind that

then started to think about what
was going to be PlayStation 2.

Those days were quite a roller-coaster
of new hardware to play with

because we were also looking
at PocketStation as well,

which was going to come out
in '99 in Japan.

And so, we heard
the PlayStation 2 was coming.

We heard that it was essentially
taking some of the experiences

that our colleagues
in Japan had,

and it was going to be the
next iteration of hardware.

But not just an evolution.
It had to be a revolution,

because it also had to last
for a good decade.

And we had to take the best
hardware that we could at the time

to create that PlayStation 2.

And with PlayStation 2, we built
our own chip manufacturing facilities

and we invested
a huge amount of money

in designing our own graphics
chip and hardware,

that meant we were much
more in control of our own destiny.

We could build a much, much
higher-performance device

that would leapfrog
orders of magnitude

beyond what even the PC
and the workstations were doing.

There was
quite a shock

when people found out what kind
of hardware was in PS2.

Because I think
we all expected PS1 plus.

So, PlayStation One had been
really neat, very easy,

compared, to say,
with the Saturn, for example.

So everyone expected
the PlayStation 2

to be more of the same.
And they didn't.

They actually produced something
with, you know, 16 processors

and chips doing this
and chips doing that.

So it was an absolute nightmare,
'cause it was nothing like a PC.

The PS2 is very much geared
to do polygonal 3D.

I mean, that's pretty much
what everybody used it for,

and it does it at a much
faster rate than the PS1.

And one of the biggest differences
between the PS1 and PS2

is the speed of access
to the graphical memory.

On the PS2, the speed of
access to the graphical memory

is just ridiculously high.

It finally let us do these
frame-based graphical effects,

and stencils and shadows

and all this extra stuff
that we couldn't do until then.

And then you had
the two vector units,

which were incredibly awesome,

super-high throughput
vector-processing designs,

with their own weird buses and
DMA and very small memory footprints.

And, like, no typical software
would ever run on them.

You basically had to write
really custom assembly engines

to power these things.

And that's what most
people didn't do.

Like, we had a ton of them
in Jak and Daxter,

and you could basically,

fifty to one hundredfold the
speed of some particular operation,

if it was something that could
be done while in the vector unit,

and you spent,
like, two months

crafting a vector unit
system to handle it.

But it made the program
enormously complicated.

You had to get really down
and dirty with this hardware,

and get really comfortable
writing, you know, simple programs,

but you're uploading
into these vector units

that are impossibly
challenging to debug

when something goes wrong, and things
can go wrong in so many different ways.

When I started at Sony Japan,

I started working behind closed
doors, basically, on the PlayStation 2,

and I wrote simulators to simulate
what the new chips would be doing.

They were called
the VU1 and the VU0.

Kutaragi at the time was saying
that he wanted non-polygonal 3D,

even though it didn't really
quite come to that.

Initially, I kind of managed to
make a system using the VU1 chip

that would actually break down
curved data into polygonal data,

and then spit that out
to be rendered as polygons.

So, eventually,
the final stage was polygons,

but the data which was being
processed wasn't polygons.

It was just curved data
information.

And so, using
all these techniques,

I managed to pull together
this duck-in-a-bath demo

with, like, water
and reflections,

and, you know, using all these techniques
we didn't have access to until then,

which most people don't realize
isn't using polygonal data.

It's using curve surface data,

which at the time was
very new, very different.

Phil Harrison
had come to Foster City

and he showed us
this water demo.

And I remember
exactly the words.

He's like, "Can you
just imagine Lara Croft..."

Who was ruling the roost
those days.

The biggest game out
was Tomb Raider.

He's like, "Can you imagine her
diving into that water?"

And it just fired everybody's
imagination. Certainly mine.

Like, "Oh, my God, yeah,
this is next level stuff."

I was invited in very early
on PlayStation 2,

as were Naughty Dog
and Insomniac,

because we'd been creating
these big titles for PlayStation One.

And, in particular,

I ended up going on a sabbatical
to Japan for three months,

and working out
of a locked room

where the very first
prototypes were kept.

I was sitting side-by-side with the
people who were making the demos

that would be used for the
announcement of PlayStation 2.

But my role was not
to make a demo.

My job was to do the early work that
hopefully would lead to the engines

of what became Ratchet and
Clank and Jak and Daxter.

Man, that stung!

I told you we shouldn't have
come here and you listened!

What?

With Jak and Daxter,
we went to open world,

taking a cue off Mario
and Banjo-Kazooie,

but we wanted to try to make
more intense gameplay

with the open world,

and there was a lot
of learning curve there.

With PlayStation 2, we were
finally able to have vistas.

I mean, we could not restrict
the player to a smaller area

like we'd been doing
on PlayStation One.

You could see
into the distance,

you could see where you were
heading as a player.

That was one of the core
concepts behind Jak and Daxter.

Let's have this broad,
completely connected world

and just let you explore it.

And I don't feel
that would've been possible

at any reasonable level of
graphical quality on PlayStation One.

We pursued this whole giant,
seamless world thing successfully,

but it was just brutally difficult on
the design and the technical aspects.

We had to deal with
the PlayStation itself,

which, like, to max out
involved... Just in that one game,

we rewrote most of the main
systems, including the graphics systems,

sometimes, like, five times.

We knew the theoretical performance
we could get out of some system,

and because the other ones,
while they function,

we just weren't near it,
because it was so difficult.

So we would just keep
rewriting and rewriting

till we got closer and closer
to the theoretical performance.

We had a lot more power,

but the expectations were so
much higher for what people wanted.

PS2 had been...
It had definitely been hyped,

and we had been part of the hyping
process, right? We were all excited.

We went from 2D to 3D,

and now we're going the next leap
forward in terms of what 3D can be.

So, we had to come up
with ways to render

much more complex objects, larger
vistas and more detailed characters.

And our intent
was to demonstrate

that we could move
beyond the PlayStation One.

We could take advantage
of the PlayStation 2

and build these immense cities,

and at the same time,

not move too far away from this love
of comedy, these stylized characters.

Please return your appendages
to the steering mechanism, sir.

Huh? Oh, right. Sorry.

Oh, and by the way, you
can stop calling me "sir."

The name's Ratchet.

Pleased to make your
acquaintance, sir.

You got a name?

My serial number
is B54296...

Oops! I'll just call you
Clank for short.

The leap from PlayStation One
to PlayStation 2 was massive,

and people could feel... As exciting
as PlayStation One was going for 3D,

the extra processing power, the
Emotion Engine that the CPU...

And running off a DVD,

again, gave so much more
freedom to the developers.

With Orange Games, who
became Guerrilla Games, at the time

had a great prototype called Marines
that they were calling a budget shooter.

It didn't quite work out as
being a "budget" shooter,

but it turned into Killzone
and it was fantastic.

And I remember when
they first showed Helghasts

dropping down wires
from the ship into the battle,

it blew you away, and you knew what
was going to be possible on that platform.

They've got me
pinned down!

In my mission to subdue
the success of Xbox,

I went on a massive campaign
looking for exclusives,

because we had signed up
Tomb Raider,

and in Europe, we had
Formula One on exclusive.

And exclusive titles
sell hardware.

We were in Los Angeles
at the Sunset Marquis hotel

and I called up Kelly Sumner

and said, "Tell me anything you've
got you want to talk about exclusivity on."

So he came with this title
called "State of Emergency."

It was a little title about some
sort of a disturbance, a riot,

and people running
into electronic stores,

running out
with TVs and things.

It was a great title. It
did well, too. It was funny.

And then I did something with
Eutechnyx called Big Mutha Truckers.

You know, so they
weren't all big.

But Kelly, at six o'clock
on the night before E3,

he said, "Well, we could talk
about Grand Theft Auto."

I think,
if you ask guys,

"If you could do anything you wanted
to do tonight, what would you do?"

"I'd shoot my boss,

"I'd drive a fast car."

And so, I think that's part
of what made GTA successful.

It was giving people the ability
to realize their fantasies.

I said, "Okay, Kelly,
let's do it."

And finally, the US demanded
in on the deal,

but they didn't want to know
anything about it when I first did it.

They weren't into
paying for exclusivity,

but I said, "Rule number one,
two, three, four.

"Install the base."

How do you install base?
Exclusive titles.

It was one of the first games I
think I played from beginning to end.

It was just hugely compelling,
and, you know, you felt like

it was a little bit
morally dubious,

but it was just
brilliant fun.

Stop!

You know, it always amused me
when you'd read media reports about,

"You could do this, you could
kill these people or do whatever."

But the reality is you don't
have to do those things.

You're driving around a city
that's a full living city

and there's people
on the sidewalk.

You don't have
to drive over them.

If you've got a sandbox where
you can do whatever you want to do,

you know, that's something
that's quite revolutionary.

I don't think GTA could've
been done on PlayStation One.

I think it would've been
incredibly difficult to do.

They were incredibly
powerful machines,

but you had to be a magician to
actually make it do what you wanted.

We were really pushing things,

and I think we'd had the
experience in 3D to make GTA,

and like the concept
of streaming.

Streaming was a big risk.

You couldn't drive inside a machine,
constantly move for 24 hours straight

and not melt.

It ended up it did work.

Yeah, I think Grand Theft Auto is the
game that most people would refer to as

the moment that
games grew up

and became more than just
a form of trivial entertainment,

but actually could become as
important as movies or music or literature.

Liberty City is in shock today as
the police and emergency services...

PS1 to PS2 felt, again,
like a significant upgrade

in terms of graphical prowess
and all the rest of it.

You know, Kutaragi -san talked
about the Emotion Engine.

You know, all the chips had their
little names, like the Emotion Engine,

and this whole premise, "Could
a video game make you cry?"

It was like... For a game,
it was inspiring that,

you know, this empowered
people to tell stories

that could actually
really move you

in the way that a really good
song or a good film could move you.

The process of moving from Ico
to Shadow of the Colossus

wasn't entirely smooth.

Personally, I was happy with Ico

and players were happy with it too

Take lighting as an example

a lot of video imagery at that time

was not preoccupied with shadow
and contrast

there was a lot of pre-rendered
and CG video around

and games with loud and flashy graphics

I was interested in more subtle approaches

to shades and tones
that were closer to reality

I think that's what differentiated us
at that time

but it wasn't a great commercial success

so I came up with Shadow of the Colossus

But whether it's the story,
the backdrop, the movement

it's all about making the player
believe the characters are real

that they exist for real in that world

for me, that's what it's all about it

The most effective way
of bringing characters to life

is through the story of that world

I always incorporate a story in my games

but I don't necessarily create games
to tell stories

The significance of PlayStation

For me personally

I feel I was able to become a
games designer and developer

because of PlayStation

My favourite game
of the PS2 era,

and I hope what many would consider
the reference work of the PS2 era,

was God of War.

The gods of Olympus
have abandoned me.

I would put God of War up there as
one of my top five video games of all time.

There is no God of War
without Ray Harryhausen,

and there is no God of War
without Raiders of the Lost Ark,

because those two things...
Down to the fact that when Kratos,

in one of the first
levels of God of War,

pushes his body up
against this pillar

and uses his lower
body strength

to kick the pillar
to cause it to collapse...

I'm telling the animators, like,

"Look what Indiana Jones does
in the Well of the Souls

"where he kicks
that giant Anubis statue.

"That's exactly what
I want this to evoke."

And that was what God of War
was really built on,

is the desire

to make a playable version of
Raiders or Clash of the Titans

that makes you feel
like the star of those movies.

So, I put all of these...

At the time, decades
of wannabe film director

into this one product,

and said, "This is my shot
to express that."

That was the beginning and
the reason God of War exists

in terms of why I pitched it.

How much is enough, Kratos?

When will it end?

When the glory of Sparta is
known throughout the world.

"The glory of Sparta."

We knew we would
have to use some cut scenes,

but we really wanted to try to do
as much storytelling in gameplay

because we knew that that
would be a more powerful way

to express storytelling.

Suddenly, we were like,

"Wow. You're going to be experiencing
more than just this gameplay.

"You're going to be taking on
the role and the emotional impact

"of this scenario.

"We want you to step
into the sandals of Kratos,

"who is this vicious killer."

And so, it was just a lot
of conscious gameplay design

about wherever we could fit
character in gameplay,

that was always
the way we would go.

And it was very hard to do,

and it added a lot of stress to the
team and a lot of time to the schedule

because we were saying gameplay
and storytelling can be fused together,

and they really should be the same thing
where we can do that as often as we can.

So that was a big pillar, philosophically,
when it came to developing that game.

Sony PlayStation 2 will be
the biggest thing to come along

since TV was invented.

I'm ready.
Everyone's ready, right?

Who wants a PlayStation 2?

PS2 was definitely a lot more
powerful than the first PlayStation.

It was a quantum leap in
terms of what it could offer.

But what a lot of people
maybe don't remember

is that for the first couple of years
there wasn't that much coming out for it.

Especially not
from third parties.

Why? Because it was
an absolute pig to program.

If I'm going to be
polite about it.

Because, unless you'd had some
grounding in assembler,

you were never going to get the
best out of that complex hardware.

So that was the price
you paid.

Yes, you get more power.

The price you pay

is you have to know how to get
the best out of those vector units,

which meant old-school
assembler-like skills.

People did get it eventually.

And I think, had PlayStation not had
the momentum from PlayStation One,

then they might have found
it harder to convince people

that the PS2
was an amazing system.

It was an amazing system,

but people had to invest a lot of
RandD to start to get the best out of it.

So, you had to wait two,
three, four years

for the third parties
to find their feet on PS2.

But when they did... You know,
the results speak for themselves.

Silent Hill 2.
The visual leap was notable.

You know, you went from having
very, very obviously polygon shapes,

to suddenly rounded characters

that are moving within
these 3D environments.

Gran Turismo really showed off,
graphically, what it could do.

And then you get
Tekkens for it.

The visuals are so,
so much better.

It wasn't just polish, it was
a sense of ambition again,

and people were just
having fun with it again.

The ethos of "anyone can create
for this" was still there.

We'd had a lot of success with
Formula One on PlayStation One.

We took the license
for World Rally Championship

and that first WRC
just blew you away

in terms of a look of a
racing game at that time.

You look at games that
came out of the London Studio

like SingStar and EyeToy: Play,

their game interface was either
the camera for EyeToy: Play,

or a microphone for SingStar.

So it made it a lot more
inclusive, and it's something

I think PlayStation's
always been about,

wanting to include not just
publishers and developers,

but all sorts of different
players as well.

Pro Evo
really exploded at that point

and PlayStation 2 was the era
of Pro Evolution Soccer.

It's coming back now
in terms of its popularity,

but everybody would
go and play Pro Evo.

Harry Potter,
Lord of the Rings...

Big licenses were
selling bucketloads.

I mean, I remember one
Christmas, PS2 came out

and you had Harry Potter, one
of the Lord of the Rings titles,

FIFA and Grand Theft Auto,

and just selling tens and tens
of thousands of these things.

So, hugely successful
era for Sony.

I think for buyers
of the PlayStation,

who loved the brand
and who loved the product...

I think it was maybe a little
bit of an easier sell

to say this is the newest, latest,
upgraded version of what you love already.

I think that was probably
not as challenging.

I mean, the marketing at
the time was fairly left-field.

David Lynch came in
to direct the advert.

It was brilliantly surreal.

Where are we...

Disembodied arms
coming out of people's mouths,

talking ducks
wearing suits and stuff.

It was straight
out of Twin Peaks.

Welcome to the Third Place.

PlayStation 2.
The Third Place.

And I loved it.

And I don't think
anyone understood it,

but, you know, when
you're that enigmatic a brand

people kind of imbue you
with all sorts of wisdom

when they see crazy stuff,

and, you know, it obviously joined
the ranks of all the other advertising

that we'd done with Chris
Cunningham and the likes of that.

Space pixies and all sorts.

And, you know, it became
part of our history.

One of the little-appreciated facts,
and it's almost rather mundane,

is the fact that the PS2
was a DVD player.

And we were by far the cheapest
DVD player on the market.

So, certainly, we were principally,
primarily, a video gaming console,

but having that secondary feature
of being a really cheap DVD player,

that helped us a lot.

And in Spain, the size of
the market tripled overnight

because our managing
director, James Armstrong,

made campaigns about DVD.

And, of course, the Japanese
PlayStation people went berserk.

"You should've been
advertising GT."

"Hey, you know,
people don't have DVDs.

"They're going to have
to pay the same price

"for a DVD player
as a PlayStation."

I said, "Buy a DVD player
and get a PlayStation free."

It was kind of the message.

And it worked. Spain had an
amazing success with that positioning.

Amazing.

PlayStation 2 has set the benchmark
in terms of ambition, even today,

for what modern video games
can and should be,

in terms of storytelling,
epic graphics, open world,

action, fun, excitement.

Absolutely.

Because the PS2
was such an enormous success,

I suspect PlayStation
as an organization

felt like

they could get away
with pretty much anything.

And a $2 billion investment
into a brand-new chip

that was touted
as a supercomputer

could be seen as probably

the bravest gamble ever made,

or one of the most dangerous follies
ever committed by a large company,

or, potentially, one of the
greatest acts of self-harm.

You could spin it
either way.

The Blu-ray drive when
Blu-ray wasn't quite ready.

It was like a version 0.9 Blu-ray
drive that was in the original PS3,

which was a vastly expensive
thing to manufacture.

For an engine developer, the PS3
was... It was a really unique beast

with the cell architecture.

To me, I felt like... A little
bit of, "Holy crap, I've gotta...

"I've got to rethink a lot of
things to make good use of this."

When we heard about
the PlayStation 3,

we saw an opportunity to get
out early on a platform,

something we really
hadn't done before.

And the opportunity to be a launch
title was incredibly enticing for us.

So, we came up with Resistance,

this world where the Earth's
history was different,

thanks to the arrival
of an alien species.

Russia
and Europe have fallen.

Resistance: Fall of Man was
challenging in a lot of ways.

It was our first launch title.

So that made it hard,

just because you're dealing
with hardware that's...

Hardware that's new, the
documentation isn't there yet,

the operating system is
constantly getting changed around,

you don't know how much memory
you're really going to have at launch

'cause the operating system
is taking a chunk of it.

In some sense,
it was an awesome design

for how much power
you could get for the price.

And in another sense, it was
so different than everything else

that it was hard for people
to take advantage of it.

I learned a lot of things in the
process of working on Resistance.

One of the big ones was
don't do a launch title.

Particularly,
don't do a launch title

for a hardware as complex
as PlayStation 3 was.

It was perhaps the most
difficult project

that I have worked on
in my career.

Yeah, launch titles. Yeah,
nerves. There's a lot of expectation.

But so exciting as well.

And trying to push things
as far as you can

on a new platform,
in a fixed time frame,

it's the biggest challenges
you're going to get

as a creator or a developer.

MotorStorm, I think,
was one of the definitive

products for PlayStation 3.

You're building ahead of the launch
of the hardware, install base zero.

So, Sony have a role to play there,
to invest in the product with you.

And it becomes one of the
definitive properties on PlayStation 3

because it's new.

Right? Because it's innovative.

MotorStorm, to me, epitomized
what a launch title is all about,

something that's fresh and
innovative in an existing genre.

Planet Earth.

Or as the rest
of the omniverse call it,

the Orb of Dreamers.

The birth
of LittleBigPlanet was

we'd managed to organize
a meeting with Phil Harrison,

who was the top man
at the time at Sony.

Phil Harrison really latched on to
the user-created content side of it.

I was really getting excited

by this idea of being able to make
a tool that lets you make games,

which kind of felt like part of my
spiritual mission somehow. It's like...

"Well, back in the day I remember
how excited I was about making games

"and how hard it was
to get into the industry.

"We can do this thing that allows
people to make games on consoles,

"which is otherwise really inaccessible
for them to make games on."

And then, Phil Harrison says,
"Well, we want to show this at GDC.

"We've got this big announcement
thing and we'd like to show it there."

And we were like,
"Okay, no pressure."

To Sony, who were actually
getting quite a hard time,

you know, with the
PlayStation One and 2.

They'd been really successful. When
you used to go to computer shows,

getting a ticket to the Sony
party was like gold dust.

Everyone wanted to go to the Sony
parties, 'cause they were so extravagant.

They used to spend
ridiculous amounts of money.

But by the time
we'd hooked up with Sony,

they were starting to get
a lot of flak in the press.

PlayStation 3
was too expensive,

and they were getting a lot
of negative press, essentially.

We showed
LittleBigPlanet at GDC

and it literally seemed
to turn the tide overnight.

Suddenly, there was
all this love and attention

coming towards Sony
for backing this thing.

And it got to the point
where Sony said to us,

"Well, this Sackboy character
that you've got, we really like it.

"We're kind of thinking of using it
as the mascot for the PlayStation 3."

We're like,
"Wow. That's amazing."

It's like Mario or this kind of
stuff, you know. It was great.

So, I mean, that was obviously the
basis of a great relationship with Sony.

We liked what they'd done for us and
they liked what we did for them, and...

I don't know.

We've been happily married
ever since, to be honest with you.

Dear PlayStation,
I got my boyfriend a PS3,

and he still hasn't hooked
it up to the Internet.

What? What is this, 1992?
I know.

I mean, if you're not
on the PlayStation Network,

you can't get PlayStation
Home, PS One Classics,

you can't download
movies, TV shows... I know!

It's like having a bathroom
without an aromatherapy candle.

Still gets the job done,
but come on! He hates...

Back then, the ability to
sell your games digitally only

and make the games digitally
from the ground up,

meant everything.

Because up until that point, every
design decision you made was about,

is it compelling enough
to put in a $60 box

that the buyers at Toys "R" Us
or Best Buy or Target or Walmart

are going to vibe with?

And you were a slave
to that $60 price point,

and you were a slave
to make sure that your content

had to appeal to those buyers.

And now suddenly, that we were
going to open up a digital storefront,

and we could make games
that were only two hours,

we could make games
that cost $4 versus $60.

Literally,
that's game-changing,

because those shackles
were now removed.

So, with Calling All Cars!,
it was us going,

"Let's make a game that we
grew up playing, like arcade games,

"or games we played in college,

"like NBA Jam
or NFL Blitz or whatever."

And that was the impetus,

that we would have never been
able to make that game on PS2 or One,

not because
of the technology,

but because we couldn't convince
retail to carry a game that small.

I gave an interview once where I
compared Calling All Cars! to a pop song

and God of War was an opera.

But we could never
make pop songs.

Now we can make
singles, right?

So that was awesome.

So PS3 was many things
to many different people.

It was definitely
a difficult period,

because a lot of work
had to be done

to turn around the technical
deficit and the monetary deficit

created by the launch of this
extraordinary piece of hardware.

'Cause it was an extraordinary
piece of hardware.

It was also extraordinarily
hard to get the best out of.

But people did, and it did
eventually turn into a success.

But, my God, was that
a war of attrition.

The PS3 clawed it back.

It lost Sony huge amounts
of money over its lifecycle.

I mean, they sold
a hell of a lot of them,

but it was by far the least
profitable console Sony's ever had,

and it took, actually, Sony
years to recover from that.

The PlayStation that emerged
at the end of PS3

was a much more gritty,
determined, focused entity

than, I would say...

And I'm not saying this
in a personal perspective,

but from a corporate
perspective.

A much more hubristic organization
at the beginning of the PS3 era.

Ah, this fast healing stuff
is going to come in real handy.

Before
we launched the PS4,

there were some observers
who rightly or wrongly thought

this could be the end of Sony.

Not just PlayStation. Sony.

There was a lot at stake.

And because of this, I have to
say, I'm enormously impressed

by the bravery and the vision of
the leadership of the organization

to deliver a focused device,

one that was much less confused and
much more developer-oriented again.

It was like going back
to the beginning.

"Let's make a machine
that developers love."

In the early days,
we were riding on hardware.

We used hardware. It was
very bespoke in some cases.

It took a lot of time to get to
grips in a lot of cases as well.

But the individuals that were
involved were small in number,

but able to make it happen
on PlayStation.

But the time we get to
the PlayStation 4 era,

we're talking about
much larger teams.

Not everybody is a specialist
in console hardware.

We had to make it far broader
in appeal to games teams.

And I think with PlayStation 4,
we succeeded.

So the strategy was set,

the hardware was focused,

and all that remained
was launch and reception.

Partners were there,
developers were involved.

Even independent developers
were involved in the launch of PS4.

The pricing had been set.

Decisions about DRM
and so on,

which had been so
controversial in other events,

had also been made.

I think even we were surprised

at just how rapturous
the reception was for PS4.

Because it was a kind of
redemption as well.

We'd been through
the fire with PS3.

And now everything
was on the line.

We had to get this right.

And if we didn't,
it could've been the end.

What we didn't expect

was that it would be
such an incredible success,

beyond our wildest dreams.

But it was the tone with which
we communicated the whole thing...

"This is for the players."

This is for the players.

For those that leap into battle
in the blink of an eye.

For the drivers
that compete for their club

no matter where they are.

The entire focus
of launch was around players.

You remember the hubris
from the PS3 years.

Contrast that with the honesty
and self-deprecation

of the PS4 launch period,

and you can see that the
organization had become transformed,

to people who were now humble,
passionate and excited

about this new thing.

Battle-worn but ready
to serve again.

That attitude, that spirit

that all began with
the first PlayStation.

One of the things
we can say about PlayStation

throughout the history is

there's always been
innovation there.

Obviously,
on the hardware side,

you know, right back
to the first controller,

and then the DualShock
and the systems on from there,

you know, there's always been
a desire for innovation.

And I think that's
always been partnered with

a strong desire and a commitment
to innovation in gameplay.

PlayStation's always been passionate
about a breadth of experiences

and giving new, different,
innovative experiences to gameplay.

You know, you can take that
right the way through to VR,

which is, again, about bringing new,
different kinds of gameplay experiences,

to people.

You know, it's something that
PlayStation's always been strong on.

Never shy to commit
to providing

a really strong, innovative
lead for the industry.

Virtual reality, which, as
yet, is an unproven space,

but we're really intrigued
and really excited by it.

I think developers are still
continuing to come to terms

with what makes a great virtual
reality gaming experience.

On a normal game, you'll
just get all the gameplay in

and you'll optimize
at the end.

But on a VR game, you have
to be optimized right at the start,

and you kind of have to work
within that constraint.

So you're starting with a...

"We must have 60 frames a
second, 90 frames a second,

"120 frames a second."

And that's the key thing
that you have to hit.

If you don't do that,

then you're going to be in problems
all the way through your development.

We also... We have this
slightly silly expression,

which is a lot of our
ordinary non-VR games,

turn everything
up to 11.

You need to saturate
the player

and excite them and
get everything going.

Well, we actually had to
reverse that ruling in VR.

We had to turn everything
down to seven,

because turning things up
to 10, let alone 11,

was just too much.

You couldn't cope with it. Your
mind can't cope with it in VR

if it's that much
going on at the time.

You need to pace things
more carefully in VR.

When I look at VR,
we're now inside the game.

Now, you think as a game
creator, as a game designer,

that's a paradigm shift totally.

'Cause we're taking it
from the television

and putting the player
inside the game now.

I think that VR will be a major shift.

In the games up until the present

all of the video, screens, etc.

have been put into a square layout

that is there to hold information.

We've had film as a medium

for over 100 years now
and this is the first time

that we've broken through this frame.

Being able to now create
art, film, and games

that don't fit into this frame,

and the question

of how to go about expressing this...

I think that the next 2 to 3 years

will major for this medium

in terms of how creators and artists

will use it, and what they will create.

Yeah, there are a lot of
tricks and tips and things

that everyone's learning in VR.

What you can do,
what you can't do.

Can you move the camera?
Can you not?

How do you move
around the environment?

You've got to match the visuals
with the feeling of movement,

and other stuff like that.

So, and we're all learning
all the time.

We're pioneering a new form
of visual language,

just as the early filmmakers
had to work out how edits work,

how fades and dissolves,
how cutaways work.

All of that kind
of language,

which most people watching
something won't even think about,

because it's just something
they intrinsically know

from watching lots
of telly and film.

And in games, we have
the same kind of stuff.

But in VR, that language
doesn't work in the same way.

You have to unlearn
those edits,

you have to unlearn
that fade.

You can't use
those things anymore

because they just
don't work.

Because it's your view
and you're in that environment.

If you jump somebody to
another location, it feels weird,

because you physically jumped,
but you haven't physically jumped.

So, you get a disconnect
between the senses

and your rational, kind of
calculating part of your brain.

So we are dealing with
inventing a new set of grammar

for a new kind of medium.

And I think
the distinction between

what's a gaming experience
and a non-gaming experience,

which hitherto has been, you
know, really clear, really binary,

I think those lines
will start to blur

and you will have VR
experiences with a certain

light touch of interactivity,

but which still technically
might be games.

Some of those could
be some of the finest

virtual reality entertainment
experiences you will ever have

but they will be
very simple to enjoy.

So I think there are a
lot of opportunities in VR

that we haven't
got a clue about.

But it gives you...

It's ultimately immersive.

You're through
the looking glass in VR.

I've not met anybody
yet who's experienced VR

who's not been
blown away by it.

I think people get
the excitement of it,

they get what they see now,

but they also get where
it can go in the future.

The legacy
of PlayStation

and the intent of PlayStation
is in the name.

It was to combine
play, fun, entertainment

with what you could do with
technology from a workstation.

And that's where
those two words come from.

"Play" and "station," meaning
"PlayStation" together.

I think that Sony put together

a fantastic team for the PlayStation.

They had members from both Sony
and Sony Music

two entirely different teams.

And there were people like me

coming from outside of Sony.

All three types of members

put their heads together
for the PlayStation.

This incredible product

would never have been created

if Sony hadn't decided on making
the PlayStation

A lot of people from different fields

were able to come together

and work on gaming hardware.

The biggest thing I took away from it

was being able to participate in this.

The success was not
just about the hardware.

We were very lucky with CD
coming to fruition.

The opportunities
that CD provided,

but also, I think, we were able to provide
a product which was very affordable.

It was appealing to
quite a different age group

than other machines
at the time.

And, therefore, it was a
combination of hardware, marketing,

but also some
great developers

who were able to fortunately
make the leap from 2D to 3D,

because that was not
a given in those days.

And bringing all these
things together,

ultimately, we were fortunate
in our success,

but the success was not
without a lot of hard work.

I think the most lasting legacy
of the first PlayStation was that

as it was a CD-ROM-based hardware
and succeeded in the marketplace,

that meant that, finally,
the economics started working

for the game creators rather
than against the game creators.

PlayStation
has been a massive step,

a massive moment, for the
home console games market.

I think what PlayStation
brought to it...

Obviously, innovation
and new ways to play,

but also this
inclusive spirit.

We really wanted to include
the best talent, the best creators,

third parties, publishers,

because we know the more
people we can include

making games, making
the best games possible,

the better it is
for the players.

And we've always
put the players

at the heart of what
PlayStation should be about.

When I first joined the PlayStation
team I was in my early 20s

and one thing that everyone
was talking about then

was the desire to make playing
video games a cooler activity.

Everyone was saying that.

This was one of the goals
in making the PlayStation.

Perhaps then, it's fair to say

that their goals have come true now.

Video games are definitely
a normal part of our lifestyle now.

The fact that adults can play
them without feeling self-conscious

is a pretty major effect
that the PlayStation

has had on us, wouldn't you say?

I personally feel that this is so.

They've done so much...

You know, IP creation,
wonderful games, wonderful tech,

now into VR.

But I think one
of the core things

that PlayStation really did
for the industry was really

throw those doors open to everyone
and say, "Games can be for all of us."

It's not just this
very small niche hobby.

It is a viable medium
of entertainment.

And now,
a real Japanese guy

from a really big
Japanese company.

In Japan.