The Dark Age Of PlayStation (2005-2008)

Cockiness & Greed

After two full generations on top, any company would be feeling rather over-confident, and that's exactly what happened.

In the PlayStation 3's first major showing at E3 2005, the video games on display were mostly limited to brief technical demonstrations. Some titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2 generated excitement, but immediately the gaming populous could tell something was wrong.

Tech demos are common in the early stages of console development, but they're also not representative of the final product. Sony made their first major mistake by attempting to pass off pre-rendered trailers and demonstrations as actual gameplay. Both gamers and developers alike were not pleased with this assertion and it was clear the system would not be able to render final releases at this level.

This tepid initial response would only get worse as time went on.

The low point of Sony's entire gaming crusade came a year later, when they embarrassed themselves at E3 2006.

Instead of walking back their overzealous claims and putting more focus on games, they instead doubled down on the techno-jargon and put out countless underwhelming. "Ridge Racer" and "Giant Enemy Crab" were already bad enough, but the PlayStation 3's fate was sealed when Kaz Hirai took to the stage and announced the infamous "$599 US dollar" price tag.

Thanks to their intensive focus on technology that was difficult to develop for, a lack of exclusive games and little emphasis on competing with Xbox Live, Sony had branded themselves as a corporation hungry for the cash of their most loyal fans. The system would arrive later that year on November 17th 2006 in the US, already lagging behind the competition.