Platform: PlayStation

In 1992, after the failure of a deal to create a CD-ROM drive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sony approached Sega of America proposing that they collaborate on a next-generation CD-ROM console to compete with Nintendo. While Sega of America was open to the idea and even started testing the waters between the two companies by having each develop a handful of titles for the Sega CD, Sega of Japan shot down the concept. Consequently, Sony would reorient their efforts towards what would become the PlayStation, while Sega would develop their own next-gen console, the Sega Saturn, in-house. In an interview with Sega-16, Tom Kalinske cited the veto as a factor in his decision to step down as head of Sega of America.

In the lead-up to the initial launch of the PlayStation in 1995, a musical sponsor ident for the console aired on the cable TV channel The WB, sung by Looney Tunes character and channel mascot Michigan J. Frog. While the footage in the advertisement was used as a recurring ident for the channel, this PlayStation version uses a different song that does not appear to have been used in any other known version of the ident. Unusually, he refers to the console itself as a "video game" for the sake of the song's rhyme scheme.

Bleem! was a PlayStation emulator released for Microsoft Windows 98 and the Sega Dreamcast. Unlike the vast majority of emulators before and since, it was released as a paid product on store shelves. Bleem!, although very impressive for the time and capable of running on low-end PCs, had many compatability issues, with the only game that ran perfectly on Windows Bleem! being the US version of One, while the only games that could be run at all on Dreamcast were Tekken 3, Metal Gear Solid, and Gran Turismo 2, all with specialised emulators released on their own "Bleemcast" discs.

Sony would sue Bleem! twice over alleged copyright infringement, and despite all odds, Sony lost due to Bleem!'s use of screenshots in promo material and the PS1 BIOS being protected by fair use. However, a mix of legal fees and Sony threatening retailers stocking Bleem! products with subpoenas would force Bleem! off of shelves anyway, and its website would be replaced with an image of Sonic The Hedgehog mourning at a grave with the Bleem! logo carved on it. Bleem! would countersue Sony for anti-competitive activity.

The popularity of Bleem! would lead both Sega and Microsoft to attempt to work with Bleem! officially to make PS1 games run on Dreamcast and Xbox, though these plans fell through due to Sega being afraid of Sony's litigation, while the developers of Bleem! simply felt Microsoft wasn't paying high enough for the license for Bleem! (something they had come to regret in the years since).

When the PlayStation 2 was revealed in Japan, a demo was shown off of a fountain of spark particles. When this demo was shown to Jon Burton, founder of Traveller's Tales, he coded an identical tech demo for the first PlayStation as a joke. This tech demo would ultimately end up in the files of Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!, unused, by accident.

The iconic start-up sound of the PlayStation is actually a combination of three different clips stored in the system BIOS, which are then either sped up or slowed down to produce what is heard at the boot-up screen. These sounds also serve to check if the system is running normally and is OK to read games - errors within the system can lead to the startup sound becoming distorted.

Sega was the second company (after Nintendo) to be in negotiation with Sony to make a new console, but the idea was eventually rejected by Sega. According to former Sega of America president Tom Kalinske, the console specs Sega had proposed were used for the PlayStation and presented to Sega of Japan, but the executives passed on partnering with Sony as they felt Sega should not share a platform with them. Kalinske felt this was "the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business". Executives from Sony and Sega had previously met multiple times over the years regarding a potential partnership, including when Sega was still under the ownership of Gulf and Western, but no deals were made. Sega concluded from the most recent meeting regarding the presented hardware specs that due to Sony's wider corporate dominance, and indirect, hesitant answers about if they should partner from Sony president Norio Ohga, that it would not be a beneficial relationship for Sega. Sony would go forward with developing their own console shortly after Sega rejected Kalinske's proposal, and were inspired to pursue high-end 3D gameplay based on the technical achievements of Sega's game Virtua Fighter.

It is possible in European Demo Discs to change the background of the menu. To do this, you must boot up a demo, wait a few seconds, then take out your current demo disc and replace it with a different one. Then you must wait a few more seconds and press "SELECT" to switch the background. This appears to not be intended as selecting a game not on the new disc will cause it to crash.

In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. They obviously did not have such compatibility, and were rather a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games sold at a markup. Game libraries featured included the Neo Geo, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and PlayStation. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles is a photograph of Soulja Boy printed onto the box. He would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.

104 of the first games on the PlayStation came in vertically-shaped boxes. While all of them shared a template with the square boxes that would eventually win out as the standard, there was not a standard make or material for the boxes with them potentially coming as jewel cases like the square boxes, plastic cases with cardboard wrapping, and cardboard boxes with foam to keep games from slipping - some games had multiple of these box types made. Fade to Black was the final long box PlayStation release.

Sony Interactive Entertainment America's president, during the early lifespan of the PlayStation, was staunchly opposed to two-dimensional games. PaRappa the Rapper, known for its paper-puppet-styled characters, only managed to release abroad thanks to its success domestically. When it proved to be a worldwide success, SIEA eased up on 2D games.

Reversing the startup sound for the console reveals the developers used a glass-breaking sound. This is most notable with the infamous “Personified Fear” glitch.

Although the PlayStation has extraordinary copy protection, many hackers, home-brewers, and pirates worked around it via the infamous "Disc Swap" trick which is possible as the console uses a lid in a similar fashion to a portable CD player. This trick involves swapping a regular PlayStation disc with a back-up or rewritable CD during the startup.

Likely because of this exploit, Sony created future numbered PlayStation consoles that use disc trays rather than lids.

On the system's Memory Card menu, after deleting data for a game, pressing the four shoulder buttons at the same time will cause the menu to reset and bring back the just-deleted save data. This feature was not carried over to the PlayStation 2.

A Memory Card peripheral called PocketStation was released in 1999 which featured a monochrome LCD display, infrared communication capability, a real-time clock, built-in flash memory, and sound capability.

The PocketStation was originally going to have a western release, however it was cancelled due to problems meeting the Japanese demand for it.

The CPU powering the NASA's New Horizons probe is the same CPU that once powered the original PlayStation console.

Marilyn Manson's 9th studio album, The Pale Emperor, was printed on PlayStation discs. Hassan Rahim and Willo Perron, the art directors of The Pale Emperor's disc and case, sourced the CDs from Sony directly. This means that the discs Rahim and Perron worked with, and the discs on which the album was distributed, came from the exact same plant as the PlayStation's discs did.

The price of the PlayStation in North America was revealed at Sony's keynote speech at the 1995 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Head of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Steve Race, took to the podium after an intentionally long-winded speech to deliver a "brief presentation". His presentation consisted of one number: $299.

While developing the PlayStation, Sony went through at least 3 dozen different logo ideas before finally settling on its final logo.

The buttons on the original playstation controller had a very distinct purpose in their design, according to their designer Teiyu Goto.
The triangle represented a person's viewpoint, meant to look like a head. The square was meant to symbolize a map. The circle and X were meant to represent "yes" and "no" respectively, and it was thought that games released on the Playstation would use controls based on the meaning of these symbols.

The original PlayStation is often mistakenly referred to as PSX, while in reality PSX is a totally different system. It is a Sony digital video recorder with a fully integrated PlayStation 2 and was only released in Japan.