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by ErikAugust 2231 days ago
"he American side wanted to make all kinds of changes - they hated the name PlayStation, they hated the grey color (they wanted it to be black)"

I have to love that these aesthetics the Americans were upset about made no difference to the success of the PlayStation.
4 comments
interestica 2231 days ago
I inherited an NES (something my parents would otherwise never have allowed to happen) and never owned another game system. My knowledge of the game systems were pretty removed. But, I know that I cognitively grouped the PlayStation with the SuperNintendo and my desktop computer at the time precisely because of the matching colours. I think it was an intentional design association that helped "understand the place" of those devices ("this is a computer"). Kinda like how my earliest tv was a huge carved wooden piece of furniture with fabric accents. The design told you "this is furniture".
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defen 2231 days ago
Sounds like a classic case of bikeshedding - the execs in question probably weren't qualified to have opinions on hardware design or software development, so instead they focused on entry-level stuff like the name and the physical appearance.
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MengerSponge 2231 days ago
Yeah, and that makes Sony JP firing them so much more satisfying.
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chc 2231 days ago
It's hard to say if that's entirely true. Sony did end up changing the system's color and making the controller bigger and bigger on subsequent iterations of the PlayStation, so apparently they came around on those ideas.
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ErikAugust 2231 days ago
I’ll agree to some degree, but PlayStation sold twice as many units as Nintendo 64. We could list the differences between consoles and point to some more important factors first - price, abundance of titles available, etc.
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lackbeard 2231 days ago
Or maybe it succeeded in spite of the name, color, and small controllers and would've been even more successful if the Americans got their way. I guess we'll never know.
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ErikAugust 2231 days ago
It sold 40 million units versus the N64’s 20 million units. N64 was black? Big whoop. Price, abundance of titles, and some other factors come before anything like that.
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