SONY’S GAME-CHANGER
On its very first day of sale in Japan on 3 December 1994, Sony sold 100,000 PlayStation consoles. When the console was finally released in the United States the following September, it shifted the same amount again but what made jaws truly drop is that the PlayStation went on to become the first console in history to surpass 100 million sales just six months short of its 10th anniversary.
By that time, the PlayStation brand had firmly established itself in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world, too. It had also blown the Nintendo 64’s 33 million sales out of the water and decimated Sega which could only muster fewer than 10 million units for the Saturn. That latter figure was a particular triumph for Steve Race, president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America. At E3 in Los Angeles in 1995 after Sega announced its console would cost $399, Steve walked to the podium, uttered “$299” and left with cheers ringing in his ears.
If anything, Steve’s quip had been a stroke of marketing genius and Sony certainly proved rather adept at carving out a market for its fledgling console
