PlayStation: The First 30 Years shows the evolution of a console that invited us to play in a whole new world

The original PlayStation didn’t just signal Sony’s rise to prominence in the video game industry, in a time where Nintendo had a firm grip on home consoles with countless memorable titles to their name – it ushered in a new era of memories that were going to be shared with Sony’s handsome machines for the next 30 years.

Benedict Redgrove, a London based photographer, has always focused on long-term projects surrounding human advances in technology, engineering and design, leading to collaborations with companies such as Sony, Apple, Airbus Aerospace. But it was because of the success of his celebrated project NASA: Past and Present Dreams of the Future, that Benedict was chosen to capture the fascinating evolution of the PlayStation in this new book PlayStation: The First 30 Years, created in collaboration with Sony and Read Only Memory.

The book features three decades of never before seen prototypes, consoles, controlled and design studies of the household name games console, from experimental mockups to the sleek consoles we all know and love today. Over 400 pages of large format photographs and insights from engineers and designers such as Ken Kutaragi, Teiyu Goto and Yujin Morisawa, Benedict’s photos create a strong emphasis on the beautiful architecture of videogame consoles and the imagination of human engineering through clean, clinical imagery that allows the technology to speak for itself.

“For me, these are also deeply personal objects. I remember playing PlayStation in my brother’s bedroom: the start-up sound, the flicker of the screen, the tiny green LED or the tray sliding out on the PS2 and gliding back with its cargo, ready to release its data,” says Benedict. “It was a ritual, a kind of theatre. A slow reveal, a tease, the warm-up before the main event.” It’s true, the PlayStation is a regular character not just in childhood memories, but the larger nostalgic media landscape. Marketed with the tagline ‘Live in your world. Play in ours’, the original PlayStation aimed to not just appeal to children, but a new generation of adults too, even going as far to create ‘PlayStation rooms’ in British night clubs.

The original console was created with love and wonder. The ‘father of the PlayStation’ Ken Kutargai admired the Nintendo Entertainment System (revealing itself in some of Benedict’s photographs of early PS1 controllers) and sound engineer Takafumi Fujisawa crafted the famous start-up sound to share the same sonics as walking into a cinema – the sense of entering a new world. Now Benedict’s photography allows even those who never owned a Sony product can share that experience.

It isn’t just the start-up sound that captured that feeling though – the whole book peaks behind the curtain of the almost sci-fi appearance of Sony’s eccentric designs. Presented as if alien artefacts retrieved from a crashed ship, PlayStation products appear with futurist edge, boundary-pushing shapes and most of all, they’re undeniably interesting to look at – from the “five-dimensionality” of the PlayStation 5 to the popular transparent shells of 2000’s consoles and bizarre controllers that flip our ideas of Sony products on their head. “The first PlayStation consoles are extraordinary in their purity of design and function. The engineering that went into the packaging alone was remarkable, especially considering nothing like it had ever been made before,” says Benedict. “The controllers now have such a clear lineage – you can trace their evolution from that very first version.”

Benedict describes the research process behind the book as fascinating as looking at Charles Darwin’s charts of evolution. “I’ve always loved test facilities, design prototypes, and the often messy, awkward process of evolution that leads to a finished object,” says Benedict. “While I do find final products beautiful, my passion lies in the development process, the history embedded in the models, the iterations, the compromises and the solutions.”

After witnessing the hundreds of boxes which contained revolutionary ideas that began as pure ideas, before evolving through paper, physics, materials, heat, manufacturing and textiles, Benedict is doubtful that many people outside of Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ realise “the sheer level of detail that goes into these machines”. From the rotating PlayStation logos to tiny symbols moulded into the underside of controllers, every decision is deliberate – and no matter how microscopic, every piece of love is magnified through Benedict’s photographic eye, capturing the intimate connection we have shared with these famous home-use entertainment systems.