Platform: PlayStation

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.

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).

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.

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.