After a botched deal with Nintendo to introduce a CD drive add-on to the Super Nintendo game console, Sony struck out on its own and created its own video game console, the Playstation. With its CD technology, Sony beat out Nintendo by luring developers with the cheap-to-produce CD format and superior graphics. Nintendo's N64 lost most of its market share and 3rd-party game developers to Sony's first game console. Playstation was heralded as the greatest game console of all-time, and it still is.

Sony followed up with the release of the Playstation 2. With its introduction of DVD format discs, Playstation 2 touted itself as the cheapest DVD video player on the market, and thus was one of the key factors in DVD's major success then and today. Even with the least powerful console of that console generation, Playstation 2 dominated the market, beating out Nintendo's Gamecube and Microsoft's Xbox. It remains the best selling console, even in this console generation. The Playstation 2 had capture the majority of the game market with superior 3rd-party game support and the attentions of the casual player market.

So, of course, Sony's Playstation 3 was sure to be a big hit too, or at least Sony thought so. Even with the massive hype surrounding Playstation 3 (or perhaps because of it), Sony was about to become its own worst enemy.

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