Eurogamer interview with Shawn Layden about PlayStation

[the-pi-guy]

Eurogamer

But within Sony, I think a lot of the leadership at the time didn't take it seriously. They thought: 'Oh my god, Sega and Nintendo own this thing [the console industry]. You think Sony's going to come in sideways and try to divvy that thing up into a three piece pie?' It was a 'fool's errand', I think some of them might have even called it at the time. But [then-Sony president Norio] Ohga-san was a believer. A lot of people thought we were taking a risk. It was a fight to get the Sony name onto the machine - they didn't want to be associated with it.

What was it like actually working inside PlayStation back then?

Layden: Talk about baptism by fire. I was walking around trying to get to know people in my first week and my boss comes up and says, 'Hey, are you going to E3? Because that's next week'. I said, 'Do you want me to go to this E3?' He said yes I should go. 'Great!' I say, before finding a colleague. 'What the hell is E3?' I didn't have business cards, and I landed in LA in 1996 going to E3 after only being in the company for 10 days. If you want total immersion in the game business as a neophyte, get dropped into E3 on day 10. You either catch on really quick, or you get rolled over by the leviathan. You just have to run faster than the slowest bear, as they say.

So the initial stage was made a joint venture between Sony Electronics and Sony Music. Half the company was from the music side and, well, you could see it on the shop floor at 8am. All the hardware engineers were at their desks wearing their Sony vests, working on their engineering thing. And then around 10 through 11am, all the Sony Music guys would come in - hungover, sunglasses, cigarettes hanging out their mouths. They'd look at the Nikkei paper for 45 minutes, drink a cup of tea, and then go: 'alright, lunch'. They'd all stand up. They'd all leave.

We wouldn't see them again for the rest of the day, because Sony Music populated sales, marketing, advertising, publisher relations. So those were the guys who would go out with the people at Square and ply them with whiskey until the wee hours of the morning to finally get Final Fantasy 7 off of Nintendo and onto PlayStation. When that announcement was made, that was really the 'oh my god' moment. 'Sony's really serious about this now.' And that's down to the music guys, the doggedness of just trying to get a deal over the line. They were amazing.

[kitler53]

You just have to run faster than the slowest bear, as they say.

do they?

the one i've heard is:

"You don't have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you."


― Jim Butcher

[Legend]

do they?

the one i've heard is:

Yeah he skipped a few words there between slowest and bear.