LudoScience

History of videogames (focused book)

Author(s) : Reiji Asakura
Editor : Editions Pix'n Love
Publication date : 12-15-2012
Language : french

This book unveils the story of a very important home console: the Sony PlayStation. It focuses on Ken Kutaragi, the key person in this project, who is today acknowledged as the "father of the Playstation." The author tells us how this visionary engineer lead Sony to tackle the home video game console market, in spite of the vigorous opposition shown by many other people in the company. Each chapter of the book details the different stages of the PlayStation project: the initial inspiration of Kutaragi when he discovered the System G; an awkward beginning when Sony partnered with Nintendo to create a CD-Rom drive for the Super NES; the choice to venture alone with a technically top-notch console; the struggle to defend this project inside Sony; the way Sony seduced third-party developers; the outstanding marketing campaign; and finally a commercial and cultural success at the end of the line. A truly captivating story, that explains how Sony managed to steal the dominant market position from Nintendo and Sega. A book that should be read alongside with La Révolution PlayStation - les hommes de l'ombre, as it features interviews with the many people that worked with Kutaragi on this project.
This book is the french translation of the english-written book "Revolutionaries at Sony", published in 2000.