Sony Play Station?

[Vertigo]

What?
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/playstation1.htm
I'm willing to bet this is bollocks.
Came out in 1991 and accepted CD-ROMs and SNES cartridges?
Eh???

[Gord]

It was never released to the public, but that's the short-story, non-drama version of what happened.

[davidleeroth]

I'm not sure if they talking about the same thing (not the attachment-type) but there was a picture/mock-up of it on Edge. I'll scan it up if I find it.

[RichieB]

During the SNES days, Nintendo did collaberate with Sony to build a CDrom interface for the Super Nintendo.  Sony called it the "Playstation" and it was designed to go up against the Sega CD and the PC engine duo's of the time.

Several games were said to have been completed for the SNES "playstation".  When Sony eventually finished the Playstation project Nintendo decided that all the games royalties would remain with Nintendo.  Sony disagreed and the eventual outcome was that Nintendo went its way (N64) and Sony went its own way.  All the software for the SNES playstation was scrapped although one or two titles were actually finished but never shown to the public.

In the article it says that Sony dropped the SNES cartridge port, this ties in with what i've said (What I remember from EDGE magazine).

This is when Sony got angry and decided to go alone.  They kept the origonal "Playstation" brand name that was to be used with the Nintendo product and started working on proprietary chipsets for the new Sony branded Playstation.  This took about 3.5 years to materialize, when in Dec 94 finally released what we know today as the Sony Playstation.

The origonal add-on drive for the SNES was white and apart from the CD-drive itself, only had a few booster chips to enhance the SNES hardware through CD software (As was shown in one issue of EDGE).

At the time (the exact day) that Sony was to announce the Playstation, Nintendo revoked and decided to join Phillips.  Another venture that beared no fruit.

Sony's version as far as I know did not get as far as final hardware, just mock ups of the final casing.  Although dev kits for the product were given out, all pictures of the SNES Sony CDrom were probably just prototypes.



Here is a picture of what the SNES CDrom  was going to look like, this is the Philips version as it was going to be compatible with the Philips CDi and would of been the final cut product.  This version got a final casing.  




Several games were finished, and since the SNES cdrom add on was compatible with the eventual CDi it probably explains how Nintendo products came to the CDi

[Vertigo]

Yes, I know all about that, but that is not the "200 units manufactured in 1991" Play Station I'm interested in.
I'm certain there must be at least one floating around out there, nothing about anything on roarvgm though.

As an incidental aside, if Mr Yamauchi wasn't such a belligerent dickhead, none of this would have happened. However, better games have come of it in general, so it can't be bad. Oh and isn't it a bit dumb to have that cartridge with a wire coming out "to transfer data"? Why not the ability to send data through the EXT port? I don't recall the BSX having a wire running from the cartridge. The diagram seems to intimate that the decoder chips are in the cartridge instead of the add-on hardware. Eh?
Good old Nintendo  

[RichieB]

Last year Hiroshi Yamachi became the 300th Richest person in the world with $1.3 billion.

I don't think he cares.    

[Vertigo]

Note that while he may have stepped down as President, that doesn't mean that he's off the scene. He's still listed as a Director in Nintendo's latest financial report, so Nintendo won't be changing their attitudes too rapdily even with new staff in charge.