Just read an article on ps2's behind the scenes stuff from gamesindustry biz :
"It was always in the back of my mind," says Chris Deering, who was Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Europe's boss at the time. "If PlayStation was ever successful, the real proof would be to have the follow up come out and do as well or maybe better."
"We were cautious because it was very rare that the leader of one generation could hold that position in the next" says Jack Tretton
Jack Tretton, who was heading up SCE US, adds: "Everybody was euphoric coming off the success of PlayStation. We had set the bar high but it really exceeded our expectations. Going into PlayStation 2, we were certainly confident, but we were also cautious because it was very rare that the leader of one generation could hold that position in the next. There was a great deal of trepidation not to get caught up in our success and to make sure that we redoubled our efforts going into the next generation."
The original PlayStation had been targeted towards a broad audience. There was promotion aimed at bringing kids on board, like the goofy and colourful Society Against PlayStation commercials, as well as marketing like the rather gruesome print ad featuring two women with bleeding noses for WipEout. For the PS2, however, SCE wanted to bring in a more mature audience. This was part of the reason why Twin Peaks creator David Lynch was hired to make the unsurprisingly bizarre The Third Place trailer.
"It was just amazing to see the potential PlayStation 2 had over PlayStation in both functionality and design," then SCE UK & Ireland boss Ray Maguire says. "It was chalk and cheese in terms of what you got.
"Part of the job was go to a slightly older demographic. We didn't want to be in Nintendo's space. We wanted to drive it up on PlayStation and make it a little bit older still, with content that was noticeably better on PlayStation 2. A lot of people understood what PlayStation was then and we needed to start converting them into PlayStation 2 users, and then get more people into the platform to grow it as we started to move on."
Tretton says that for the US launch, Sony's target audience was 17 year-olds: "We had the exact audience in mind for PlayStation 2 that we did for PlayStation because it was so well targeted. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. We use the age of 17 as kind of the target of the bullseye, with the theory that everybody under 17 aspires to be 17 because of an older sibling or you're going to have your driver's licence. If you're older, you harken back on your teenage years."
"We were asking what we could do to make it difficult for Sega or Nintendo to come back," he explains. "We didn't start with a big portfolio of game development studios like Sega and Nintendo had. We were really friendly with third-parties right from day one, which was [president of SCE] Ken Kutaragi's idea. He had made a deal with EA from the start and in Japan some of Sony Music's A&R team reached out to SquareSoft and got Final Fantasy, as well as companies like Enix. We lucked out with Tomb Raider on PlayStation which [SCEA VP third party relations] Phil Harrison had managed to get an exclusive on sequels for. It became clear that exclusivity of software was what drove hardware, not the other way around."
Tretton adds: "Backward compatibility meant people didn't feel like that the investment they'd made in the previous five years was completely abandoned and they had to dig into their pockets again to stay on top of where the games industry was headed."
"Microsoft was a company that you had to respect," Tretton says. "It certainly had tremendous resources and expertise. We were well aware that the market was incredibly competitive, but we weren't Sony veterans; we were industry veterans. Particularly in the West -- and with them being a US-based company -- we had a healthy respect for them. But they tended to have a heritage more in PC gaming or seemed to have a connection with first-person shooters with Halo. While that was a segment of our business, we felt like we had an advantage on a worldwide basis and being able to appeal to global markets."
He continues: "You certainly have to give Microsoft credit for generating excitement with the Xbox. It was a great time in gaming. I'm a firm believer in rising tide lifts all boats. Games grew exponentially after the launch of the original PlayStation."
"We targeted Microsoft from day one -- we were ruthless," he says. "I'm not of this mentality anymore, but at the time it was life or death as far as I was concerned. We had this expression in our business meetings: 'Kill them right at the start and take no prisoners' when it came to Microsoft. It worked at least for PS2, and it continued to work on PS3 and PS4, and it'll probably continue to work on PS5 because we drove piles under the strength of the PlayStation equals games concept at that stage when we were getting ready to take Microsoft on."
"Both PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were the foundations of a really strong and solid business across the world," Maguire says. "It didn't happen everywhere at the same time. But the global expansion was the result of those two machines showing that it worked and you have to get some more people on board that haven't tried it yet. It was the bedrock of something which might have been the first one -- that was a runaway success -- and then it died. But it didn't; it went the right way."
He continues: "It was the right product at the right time and the right price. It was something everyone could get into easily, there was a huge breadth of content, it went through age groups and had a great price -- that's difficult to say no to."
Tretton concludes: "PlayStation 2 was the culmination of ushering in video games as mainstream entertainment. People stopped questioning whether it was a fad that was going to go away and started to look at it as a legitimate entertainment medium on a par with box office or the music industry."
"It was always in the back of my mind," says Chris Deering, who was Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Europe's boss at the time. "If PlayStation was ever successful, the real proof would be to have the follow up come out and do as well or maybe better."
"We were cautious because it was very rare that the leader of one generation could hold that position in the next" says Jack Tretton
Jack Tretton, who was heading up SCE US, adds: "Everybody was euphoric coming off the success of PlayStation. We had set the bar high but it really exceeded our expectations. Going into PlayStation 2, we were certainly confident, but we were also cautious because it was very rare that the leader of one generation could hold that position in the next. There was a great deal of trepidation not to get caught up in our success and to make sure that we redoubled our efforts going into the next generation."
The original PlayStation had been targeted towards a broad audience. There was promotion aimed at bringing kids on board, like the goofy and colourful Society Against PlayStation commercials, as well as marketing like the rather gruesome print ad featuring two women with bleeding noses for WipEout. For the PS2, however, SCE wanted to bring in a more mature audience. This was part of the reason why Twin Peaks creator David Lynch was hired to make the unsurprisingly bizarre The Third Place trailer.
"It was just amazing to see the potential PlayStation 2 had over PlayStation in both functionality and design," then SCE UK & Ireland boss Ray Maguire says. "It was chalk and cheese in terms of what you got.
"Part of the job was go to a slightly older demographic. We didn't want to be in Nintendo's space. We wanted to drive it up on PlayStation and make it a little bit older still, with content that was noticeably better on PlayStation 2. A lot of people understood what PlayStation was then and we needed to start converting them into PlayStation 2 users, and then get more people into the platform to grow it as we started to move on."
Tretton says that for the US launch, Sony's target audience was 17 year-olds: "We had the exact audience in mind for PlayStation 2 that we did for PlayStation because it was so well targeted. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. We use the age of 17 as kind of the target of the bullseye, with the theory that everybody under 17 aspires to be 17 because of an older sibling or you're going to have your driver's licence. If you're older, you harken back on your teenage years."
"We were asking what we could do to make it difficult for Sega or Nintendo to come back," he explains. "We didn't start with a big portfolio of game development studios like Sega and Nintendo had. We were really friendly with third-parties right from day one, which was [president of SCE] Ken Kutaragi's idea. He had made a deal with EA from the start and in Japan some of Sony Music's A&R team reached out to SquareSoft and got Final Fantasy, as well as companies like Enix. We lucked out with Tomb Raider on PlayStation which [SCEA VP third party relations] Phil Harrison had managed to get an exclusive on sequels for. It became clear that exclusivity of software was what drove hardware, not the other way around."
Tretton adds: "Backward compatibility meant people didn't feel like that the investment they'd made in the previous five years was completely abandoned and they had to dig into their pockets again to stay on top of where the games industry was headed."
"Microsoft was a company that you had to respect," Tretton says. "It certainly had tremendous resources and expertise. We were well aware that the market was incredibly competitive, but we weren't Sony veterans; we were industry veterans. Particularly in the West -- and with them being a US-based company -- we had a healthy respect for them. But they tended to have a heritage more in PC gaming or seemed to have a connection with first-person shooters with Halo. While that was a segment of our business, we felt like we had an advantage on a worldwide basis and being able to appeal to global markets."
He continues: "You certainly have to give Microsoft credit for generating excitement with the Xbox. It was a great time in gaming. I'm a firm believer in rising tide lifts all boats. Games grew exponentially after the launch of the original PlayStation."
"We targeted Microsoft from day one -- we were ruthless," he says. "I'm not of this mentality anymore, but at the time it was life or death as far as I was concerned. We had this expression in our business meetings: 'Kill them right at the start and take no prisoners' when it came to Microsoft. It worked at least for PS2, and it continued to work on PS3 and PS4, and it'll probably continue to work on PS5 because we drove piles under the strength of the PlayStation equals games concept at that stage when we were getting ready to take Microsoft on."
"Both PlayStation and PlayStation 2 were the foundations of a really strong and solid business across the world," Maguire says. "It didn't happen everywhere at the same time. But the global expansion was the result of those two machines showing that it worked and you have to get some more people on board that haven't tried it yet. It was the bedrock of something which might have been the first one -- that was a runaway success -- and then it died. But it didn't; it went the right way."
He continues: "It was the right product at the right time and the right price. It was something everyone could get into easily, there was a huge breadth of content, it went through age groups and had a great price -- that's difficult to say no to."
Tretton concludes: "PlayStation 2 was the culmination of ushering in video games as mainstream entertainment. People stopped questioning whether it was a fad that was going to go away and started to look at it as a legitimate entertainment medium on a par with box office or the music industry."
