Did a SUPER RARE Sony-Nintendo PlayStation prototype just pop up online? Possibly, maybe A precious prototype of what appears to be a Nintendo-Sony Playstation has been paraded online, after the console was discovered languishing in a "box of junk". Youtube Video Dan Diebold uploaded some pictures of the supposed SNES to imgur and said: "My dad worked for a company, apparently one of the guys he used to work …
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Real or Fake? I can't work it out... The lower front panel is yellowed from exposure to UV light, with less yellowing under the Controller 1 socket, yet the rest of the case hasn't yellowed at all. This doesn't mean that it is definitely a fake - it might be that the yellowed lower front panel was modified by SONY from a production PC CD-ROM fascia, and the rest of the case made by prototyping process... possibly. Still, it's weird.
Apart from this front panel, the rest of the machine externally appears to be identical to the genuine 1990 SONY PlayStation concept, except for the area where the cartridge slots in. This concept was designed by Soichi Tanaka, with a logo designed by Masaaki Omuri.
The first PlayStation that was sold commercially was designed by Teiyu Goto, who later went on to found Sony's VAIO computers. The lilac colour of this PlayStation was to minimise the appearance of the inevitable UV yellowing.
Source for the factual stuff: ISBN 9780789302625
who is going to pay big bucks?
There is a massive market for unreleased/dev/prototype gaming kit, I personally have made considerable amounts of money selling prototype/beta games and dev kits to collectors over the years.
If you are curious, check out ASSEMblerGames.com where the guy who has this device also posts.
The device appears to be 100% legit, the guy doesn't want to open/power it up himself as it may destroy what might be one of only 3 devices left in the world (the other 2 are in Sony safes)
The "value" of this device is more than just dollars/pounds/yen
I can see the svideo, a handfull of RCA's and 2 specfic not so say propriatory output ports, nothing RJ like, unless you mean the small rectangular hole below RFU DC out. Seems way too thin to be an RJ45, plus no locking tab cutout. More like a blank for another optional connector.
About the irregular yellowing, that actually made it look more plausable to me
I have loads of old super famicom games, and they do seem to yellow in odd ways, many of them have a perfect front, but the back half of the case is really yellow, with no visible gradient between the two (I often swap the yellow backs with non yellow ones of dirt cheap games), I can't believe people are leaving them face down in direct sunlight, so I can only assume there is some slight difference in the chemicals in the plastic that makes up the two halves.
The lack of a space in the logo is fishy, also, I'm surprised there is so little nintendo branding on the thing, I would have expected both logos on the device.
[Edit] Just looked at the old pic in one of the links, there's no space in the title of that one either, and no apparent nintendo logos, so its starting to look pretty legit to me.
Apparently, Sony were going full Sony, zero Nintendo in the build/design due to their clever trick in contract agreement with Nintendo. Who/when/how the argument started is still disputed, but it was to be 100% Sony royalties, and nothing paid to Nintendo, having little to no Nintendo branding (except the controller? Exception as the contract was "console"?) seems to back up the legitimacy actually. Hmmm.
Well, the button colors kinda give it away as well. The pictured device is using the SNES controller port type, which used gray and purple buttons. It wasn't until a later version of the SNES when the four-color buttons started appearing on controllers, long after the partnership melted down.
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