The Nintendo Play Station is easily one of the most important artifacts in gaming history. Created by Nintendo and Sony as an add-on for the Super Nintendo back in 1991, the project was cancelled, leading Sony to make the fateful decision to enter the video game industry on its own. Meanwhile, Nintendo instead allied with Philips on the disastrous CD-i, which resulted in a trio of Zelda games best left forgotten. In 2009, however, the Nintendo Play Station prototype ended up in the possession of Terry Diebold, who unknowingly purchased the item in a lot of abandoned property once owned by a former executive with Sony. Today, the item went up for sale with Heritage Auctions, and the current bid is at $15,500, as of this writing.

It cannot be overstated how different the video game industry could have been had the Nintendo Play Station seen general release. It's impossible to know whether or not the system would have proven to be a success, but the landscape of the entire video game industry would have been quite different, had the partnership gone any further. After the dissolution of their working relationship, Sony released their own version of the PlayStation, which completely revolutionized the video game industry. Since the PlayStation's debut in 1994, Nintendo has released a number of successful systems and consoles, but Sony has remained the firm market leader.

It will be interesting to see how much the item manages to fetch at auction. The highest recorded price ever paid for a single video game is a sticker-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros., which sold for $100,150 last year. The Nintendo Play Station, however, is far bigger than any one game, and one collector will have to offer up quite a bit for the chance to add it to their collection. It's so unique that there's nothing that can be stacked up against it for comparison to surmise a guess as to what price it might sell for. Diebold has reportedly been offered $1.2 million for the console in the past, but he found that amount to be too little, given some of his past expenses traveling with the system around the country.

No matter how much the system sells for, it will mark an historic moment in the history of the video game medium. The auction ends in 22 days.



Posted: Feb 15, 2020 11:27 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2020/02/13/nintendo-play-station-auction/