Nov 07, 2016 06:40 PM
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PlayStation(Japanese: ????????? Hepburn: Pureisuteshon?, officially abbreviated PS) is a gaming brand that, as of 2016, consists of four home video game consoles, as well as a media center, an online service, a line of controllers, two handhelds and a phone, as well as multiple magazines, and is created and owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The brand was first introduced on December 3, 1994 in Japan with the launch of the original PlayStation console.[1]
The original console in the series was the first video game console to ship 100 million units, 9 years and 6 months after its initial launch.[2] Its successor, the PlayStation 2, was released in 2000. The PlayStation 2 is the best-selling home console to date, having reached over 155 million units sold as of December 28, 2012.[3] Sony's next console, the PlayStation 3, was released in 2006 and has sold over 80 million consoles worldwide as of November 2013.[4] Sony's latest console, the PlayStation 4, was released in 2013, selling 1 million consoles in its first 24 hours on sale, becoming the fastest selling console in history.[5]
The first handheld game console in the PlayStation series(called the PlayStation Portable or PSP), sold a total of 80 million units worldwide by November 2013.[6] Its successor, the PlayStation Vita, which launched in Japan on December 17, 2011 and in most other major territories in February 2012, had sold over 4 million units by January 2013.[7] PlayStation TV is a microconsole and a non-portable variant of the PlayStation Vita handheld game console.[8] Other hardware released as part of the PlayStation series includes the PSX, a digital video recorder which was integrated with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, though it was short lived due to its high price and was never released outside Japan, as well as a Sony Bravia television set which has an integrated PlayStation 2. The main series of controllers utilized by the PlayStation series is the DualShock, which is a line of vibration-feedback gamepad having sold 28 million controllers as of June 28, 2008.[9]
The PlayStation Network is an online service with over 110 million users worldwide(as of July 2013).[10] It comprises an online virtual market, the PlayStation Store, which allows the purchase and download of games and various forms of multimedia, a subscription-based online service known as PlayStation Plus and a social gaming networking service called PlayStation Home, which had over 41 million users worldwide at the time of its closure in March 2015.[11] PlayStation Mobile(formerly PlayStation Suite) is a software framework that provides PlayStation content on mobile devices. Version 1.xx supports both PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TV and certain devices that run the Android operating system, whereas version 2.00 released in 2014 would only target PlayStation Vita and(optionally) PlayStation TV.[12] Content set to be released under the framework consist of only original PlayStation games currently.[13
