Back in 1994, Sony decided to release what we know today as the PS1 or PSX in Japan. And later in 1995, it was introduced to North America. This first console to help bring games that were burned onto a CD-ROM into the mainstream. Along with the Introduction of the DualShock Rumble Controller which was a standard on their controllers, unlike the N64 optional Rumble Pak. Not to mention two analog sticks instead of the one found on the N64 controller. With that launched Ape Escape in 1999, which was the first game to be made to use both sticks. With the switch from Cartridge to CD-ROM we lost the ability to save games, but luckily Sony included a Memory Card. The Memory Card was great because you could take it with you anywhere and play the game where you left off at on your friend's PS1. Alongside the PS1 came many Great titles, that include one of my all-time favorite Final Fantasy VII, Legend of Dragoon, and Chrono Cross along with many other titles to choose from.
Now in the Year 2000, Sony wanted to change the way we view games entirely with the introduction of the PlayStation 2 also known as (PS2). Released in both Japan and NA in the same year. This console was competing mainly with Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The PS2 was the first console to allow you to play your old games and use the old controllers from the PS1 using the PS2, This is known as backward compatibility. Until this day the PS2 has sold over 158 million copy's 150million out of that are confirmed sales by Sony themselves in 2011. About 3.9k game titles are available with some of the most popular titles being; God of War, Grand theft Auto, and Metal gear solid. One of the low-key features of the PS2 was that it could be used as a standalone DVD player. Which was great a the time because DVD players were expensive to begging with.
While the PlayStation 3 Was the successor of the PS2, it was not able to surpass the sales made by its older and weaker brother, Selling about 80 million units. First shown at E3 2005 and later released at the end of 2006. It was the first console to come with a Blue-ray Disc player. The PS3 also introduced an Interface where you could communicate and play with other gamers all over the world. Called PlayStation Network, along with the ability to remote control the console using the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It also came with Internal storage with the option of a 20 or 60 GB models. One HDMI output, four USB ports, one ethernet port and the new DualShock 3 controller, all of this came standard. On that note, only the available 60 GB model shipped with a flash card reader and Wi-Fi enabled. The graphics and power of this console were really on another level especially when playing games like Battlefield, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Of course Final Fantasy XIII. More than 500 million games were sold for this console as of March 2012 which to me seems like a crazy number. But still doesn't come close to the PS2's astounding 1.5 billion plus games it sold during its lifetime.
Next in line is currently my console of choice and of course as the pattern has been the only thing that changes in the name is that last number after the word "PlayStation" which leads us to what we know today as the PlayStation 4 (PS4). This time around the console was released in NA first back in 2013, and after at the beginning of 2014, it was released in JP. This and the Xbox ONE are one of the first consoles ever to build more like a PC than any other console before. Coming with an eight-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz, 8 GB DDR5 unified RAM along with 256 MB of DDR3 for background tasks, the GPU has 18 compute units and can peak at 1.8 teraFlops. The PS4 came standard with 500 GB of storage which is useful especially when one downloaded game can take up as much as 90 GB from what I have personally seen. Storage can get full pretty quickly, so either upgrading the internal storage you for those of you who are tech savvy or buying an external drive and using that to store your games onto. Some of the most popular games out right now for the PS4 include, Destiny, Nier Automata and Battlefield 1. As Sony claims the PS4 is ten times more potent than its previous model, it's amazing how far we have come and even more exciting to think about where we are heading, especially with the boom in Virtual Reality Technology which includes the PS VR headset.
