Sony celebrates PlayStation's 20th Anniversary by releasing limited edition, retro-design PS4 units.
It's PlayStation's 20th Anniversary today, and Sony commemorates the landmark in retro fashion, by releasing grey PlayStation 4 consoles. The units are furnished like the PlayStation 1, with buff grey finish for the console and controllers.
Sony only has a limited number of units released, though. 12,300 to be exact, which indicates the date of its anniversary. The console is first available in Japan for 49,800 Yen, $499 US and £399 UK. The entire package comes in a special box.
The PlayStation 1 was first launched on the Japanese market December 3, 1994, immediately pitted against Sega and Nintendo's (then) next-generation consoles. The console war was a battle of hardware specs and game title support, and each offered something to the table.
Sega's Saturn boasted of 32-bit hardware and solid initial releases, Virtua Fighter, Daytona, and Panzer Dragoon. Nintendo worked on its core fan base and came out with Zelda 64, Super Mario 64, and Mario Kart 64, among others.
Sony's PlayStation 1 is actually a collaborative effort with Nintendo in the 80's; the two companies were developing a then new CD-ROM format. Sony later opted out of the partnership, then released its own CD-ROM gaming console on the Japanese, US, and European markets.
Sony PlayStation's 20th Anniversary marks well-known titles for the console: Tekken, Ridge Racer, Wipeout, and Crash Bandicoot, among others. Sony released two portable consoles afterwards, the Sony PlayStation Portable and the Sony PSP Vita.
A smaller PlayStation 1 was released, followed by the PlayStation 2 and 3.
Sony continued support for the PlayStation 1 with a stream of solid titles, until March 2006 when the PlayStation 2 was at its peak.
The grey PlayStation 4 is now available, in time for the holidays. Previous PlayStation consoles were backward-compatible; titles from previous-generation consoles work on the new platforms (cnet.com).
