History of Sony's Playstation

PlayStation launched on September 29th, 1995 for a retail price of £299. Sony finally discontinued production of the "original" PlayStation, and its smaller sibling the PSone, in 2006 after the console's 11 years on shop shelves.

Sony launched the PSone on 29 September 2000, well into the lifecycle of the PlayStation. This redesigned console was a huge hit with its £79 price tag, and went on to outsell Sony's new PlayStation 2 in 2000, which had launched at the same time. The pattern of shrinking and redesigning consoles late in their lifecycles was a trend which would continue with the PlayStation 2 and 3.

The PlayStation 2, launched on 24 November 2000, went head-to-head with competition from Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft's new console, the Xbox. Despite the competition, the PlayStation 2 was the highest-selling console in the marketplace until 2010, outselling competitors and even its successor, the PlayStation 3, for its first three years on sale.

Sony's PlayStation 2 Slimline launched on 1 November 2004, and copied the PSone's stategy of combining a rockbottom price, £99, with redesigned hardware, to take advantage of cost-saving manufacturing processes available later in the console's generation.

The PlayStation 3 had the highest recommended retail price of any Sony games console to date when it launched on 23 March 2007 in the UK with a price tag of £425. Sales of the PlayStation 3 were surpassed by the previous generation of PlayStation 2s until 2010, as Sony struggled to reduce the recommended retail price of the console.

The PlayStation 3 Slim launched on on 1 September 2009 for a recommended price of £249.99, but lost a number of features present in the original PlayStation 3, most significantly, backwards compatibility with PlayStation 2 games was dropped.

Sony took the decision to redesign the PlayStation 3 not once, but twice with the recent release of the PlayStation 3 Super Slim on 28 September 2012. Again this move reduced the price of the console further to £240, but still short of the Xbox 360's price of £140.

Even though the PS4 appears to be on the horizon, Sony has not given up on its predecessor. Red and blue editions of the PlayStation 3 were launched last week.

Sony is expected to announce the PlayStation 4 console in New York on February 20th, 2013. Leaked images suggest the controller could look something like this but we have yet to see the console itself. The PS4 is expected to be launched before the end of the year, with fierce competition likely to come from a new Microsoft Xbox.