Sony PlayStation One

The PlayStation (Japanese: プレイステーション Hepburn: Pureisutēshon?)(officially abbreviated to PS, and commonly known as the PS1 or PSX) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The console was released on 3 December 1994 in Japan,[1]9 September 1995 in North America, 29 September 1995 in Europe, 15 November 1995 in Australia, and for Korea in 1996. The console was the first of the PlayStation lineup of home video game consoles. It primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn as part of the fifth generation of video game consoles.

The PlayStation is the first "computer entertainment platform" to ship 100 million units, which it had reached 9 years and 6 months after its initial launch.[8] Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, preferred Sony's console over the competition from Sega's Saturn, saying "our game designer likes the Sony machine".[9] In 2000, a redesigned, slim version called the PSone was released, replacing the original grey console and named appropriately to avoid confusion with its successor, the PlayStation 2.

In 1999, Sony announced the successor to the PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, which is backwards compatible with the PlayStation's DualShockcontroller and games, and launched the console in 2000. The last PSone units were sold in winter 2004 before it was officially discontinued in March 2005, for a total of 102 million units shipped since its launch 10 years earlier. Games for the PlayStation continued to sell until Sony ceased production of PlayStation games on 23 March 2006 – over 11 years after it had been released, and less than a year before the debut of the PlayStation 3.[10]