Sony Rediscovers Its PlayStation Heritage

This year marks a significant milestone for PlayStation, with the brand turning 30. Sony is embracing this anniversary with a mix of nostalgia and commercial opportunities. The company is tapping into a powerful vein of nostalgia, as 30th anniversaries are a big deal for media properties. This timing allows people who enjoyed PlayStation in their teens to recapture their youth through rose-tinted lenses, now that they are generally affluent and in mid-life. While all game companies use nostalgia as a selling point, Sony's approach to its 30th anniversary is notable, especially when compared to Nintendo. Nintendo is a master at exploiting its back catalog and history for profit, whereas Sony has been more reticent about the role of its history in the identity of PlayStation today. However, as Sony gears up for the 30th anniversary, there are signs that attitudes within the company are changing. The PlayStation back catalog is finally being recognized for its strength. It is unclear why Sony has not been as keen on promoting its software archives as Nintendo or Microsoft, which has made a significant effort to emphasize backwards compatibility. Sony has celebrated PlayStation's history, but the real back catalog of early PlayStation games has often been overlooked. There are potential reasons for this, including the fact that early PlayStation games were the first major generation of 3D titles and were rough around the edges, which did not initially attract fond nostalgia. The hardware up to the PS3 generation was also complex and unusual, creating issues for emulation or porting. The decision to largely overlook the back catalog remains puzzling, especially considering that Sony's music and movie divisions have re-releases and remasters as their core business. The demographics have been perfect for PlayStation nostalgia for some time now, with the original console releasing in 1994 and the PS2 now sliding into the same timeframe. Nostalgia is a valuable opportunity to sell the same thing again to a customer who can now afford it. It has been unusual that Sony has seemed slow to capitalize on this. However, there is a shift in the air, and the company may be changing its approach. The positive reaction to Astro Bot may have shifted Sony's thinking, as the game's celebration of PlayStation's history and back catalog generated goodwill and highlighted the lack of availability of back catalog titles on PS5. The recent State of Play broadcast featured two much-requested back catalog titles, Soul Reaver and Lunar, returning in remastered collections. This is a small step, but it indicates that Sony and its partners are taking the demand for playable editions of key historic titles on modern hardware more seriously. The challenge of updating games for which source code and original assets are often lost is significant, but the appetite for games of the PS1 and PS2 era has never been greater. Developers are now emulating the look of early 3D titles in contemporary games, suggesting that the low-polygon, glitchy 3D of the 1990s and early 2000s is finding its place in the sun. Having as much of PlayStation's history as possible available and playable enhances the value of the platform. It is a slow process, but it is worth celebrating that gaming history is being preserved, celebrated, and kept commercially relevant.