The Secret Origin of PlayStation
How a Broadcast Graphics Demo Helped Create Sony’s Greatest Invention
In September 1984, inside a Sony lab in Atsugi, Japan, a computer-generated face pulsed and melted on a monitor in real time. It wasn’t a video. A technician slid a control, and the image responded instantly, shrinking, stretching, and morphing on command. It was a mesmerizing display of power.
Standing nearby was an engineer named Ken Kutaragi. He didn’t know it yet, but the technology in front of him would ignite the creation of one of the most defining product in Sony’s history.
That was the day PlayStation quietly began.
