Nowadays, Sony is one of the major players in the gaming industry. Its consoles have dominated the market for the last two decades, with the PlayStation name known throughout the world. The most recent iteration of the hardware, the PlayStation 5, has been an unprecedented success and shows no sign of slowing down. The PlayStation line first began in 1994 with the release of the first console, which sold more than 100 million units in total.
However, the history of PlayStation could have been very different. Sony first planned to enter the gaming industry by partnering with Nintendo to produce a CD-ROM accessory for the SNES, and later a console with a built-in CD drive. At the last minute, Nintendo backed out of the deal and instead decided to work with Phillips. The end result of this partnership was the much-maligned Phillips CD-i, but it also had the effect of pushing Sony to release its own console in retaliation. Thus, the PlayStation was born and Sony has never looked back.
While Nintendo and Sony never released the SNES/PlayStation hybrid, several prototypes of the proposed console were produced. Although there’s little information about the number of units created, a working version surfaced in 2015. Due to the rarity and historical importance of the prototype console, the few units that are known to exist are quite valuable. When one was put up for auction in 2020, it fetched a price of $360,000 as a result of a bidding war between Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey and Pets.com founder Greg McLemore, which McLemore ultimately won.
[Featured image by Paquitogio via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC0 1.0]