Ct was on December 3, 1994 that Sony’s PlayStation 1 burst onto the scene in Japan before experiencing international success the following year with its marketing in North America and Europe in September 1995. A revolutionary console which has just celebrated these thirty years and which will have marked an entire generation of players.
Smashing the sales records of the time and in particular the first million copies sold in 2007. It is today, if we exclude portable consoles, the fourth best-selling console of all time, behind the PS2 , the Nintendo Switch and the PS4, with no less than 102 million copies sold worldwide.
An absolute “banger” – meaning “incredible, excellent creation” – on which the standard-bearer of retro-gaming in Pau, Sébastien Cabrera, from the New Life Game store, takes an informed look: “When it came out I was 18 years old and we played at a friend’s house. We were really into Tony Hawk and Coolboarders. We turned the lever all evening long,” he enthuses. And to continue: “What was clever about this console was that it was a CD player at the same time. The CD medium made it possible to have qualitative music and a lot of content on a medium that was not very expensive compared to the cartridge. That’s where they took over the Nintendo 64.”
Start of 3D
Asked about his video game experience at the time, he elaborates: “Play 1 is also the beginning of 3D, with Tekken for example. It was really the fighting game that left its mark on everyone. Before the PlayStation 1, if you wanted to play big games it was on an arcade machine or on Néo-Géo and it was overpriced. She really democratized video games.”
Among the “must-haves” of the machine at the time, the enthusiast notably remembers Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider, Tekken, Final Fantasy VII, Driver or even Rayman, Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Games with resounding success like Gran Turismo 3, sold 10.85 million, or Tekken, the first PlayStation game to exceed the million unit mark.
On the console’s Wikipedia page, Sony counted, on June 30, 2008, no less than 4,944 titles marketed in Japan, 1,335 in North America and 1,639 in Europe with cumulative game sales amounting to 962 million units. Games that can be found today second-hand at very varied prices.
-“For me it ranges from around 5 to 100 euros. A Final Fantasy VII costs 50 euros but you also have Suikoden or Legend of Dragoon which are closer to 100 euros. These are prices which are often indexed to rarity and in particular the demand of full setters. People who want to buy all the games released on the same console. Some poorly published games become rarities and end up becoming very expensive. »
For the console, sold at its release for 2,099 francs, or 479.87 euros, count today around 50 euros for a console without its box and rather 150 euros for one in very good condition, in its original box assures the Pau merchant. On March 23, 2006 Sony announced the cessation of production. After eleven years of good and loyal service, the PS1 disappeared from production lines, the same year as the release of the PlayStation 3.
What future for video games?
Today the world of video games is exploding. Having become the world’s largest entertainment market, the sector recorded growth of 2.6% in one year in 2023 to reach $187.7 billion compared to $33.2 billion for cinema and $65.17 billion for music.
A success attributable to the titanic progress made in the sector. “Today we still see graphics that are very close to photo realism… and with AI progressing, when the teams master the tool, we risk having really crazy things” assures Sébastien Cabrera. “We can also imagine that motion capture will soon be outdated. We already have video tools that allow you to film yourself and directly associate the character with the model,” he continues. “And then there is VR which risks sweeping away everything in its path,” assures the enthusiast. All you have to do is test the latest Méta Quest 3 headset and all its augmented reality applications. The film “Ready Player One” by Steven Spielberg is due in 5, 10 years max. For me it is the future of video games, even if, for the moment, it is still confined to the practice of a few purists of the genre.”
