Nintendo PlayStation

One of the surviving prototypes.
Developer	Nintendo Sony
Manufacturer	Nintendo Sony
Release Date	Unreleased
Lifespan	Cancelled
Console Generation	Fourth or Fifth
Processor	Ricoh 5A22 @ 3.58 MHz Secondary co-processor @ 2.048 MHz
GPU	SNES PPU @ 64KB VRAM
Memory	552KB (Total RAM)
Media	Super Disc CD-ROM ROM cartridge
Input	2 controller ports, 1 headphone jack (Olafsson prototype)
Codename	SFX-100
Price	$360,000 (2020 Auction)
Predecessor	Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)
Successor	PlayStation (1994)

The Nintendo PlayStation, was a home video game console prototype, developed by Nintendo and Sony. It was intended to act as a hybride console with the functionality of the planned SNES CD-ROM add on, being compatible with Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges as well as Sony's CD-based Super Disc form.

It was in 1988, as Sony began development of the CD-based add-on for the Super NES.

On 1 June 1991, during the Summer CES in Chicago, Sony announces that the company would develop the CD-based add for the Super Famicom. The upcoming day, Nintendo announced that the company would develop the add with Philips rather than Sony.

The SNES CD-ROM was never released, and instead, Sony developed the PlayStation, and first released it in Japan in December 1994.

While never officially released to public, its existence first leaked on the Internet in June 2007.

Surviving prototypes

An estimate of 200 prototypes were built, but nearly all of them were destroyed on Nintendo and Sony's orders. Only two prototypes are known to still exist.

The first was in the hands of the founder of Sony Computer Entertainment, Olaf Olafsson. It remained in his hands when he left Sony in 1996 and became president of Advanta, an American banking company in 1998. Olafsson later abandoned the prototype when he left the company in 1999, and remained as property of it until its bankruptcy in 2009. The prototype ended up in the hands of former Advanta employee Terry Diebold, who bought it at a bankruptcy auction and was kept in the attic of his house until July 2015, when his son Dan Diebold rediscovered it.

That prototype was later repaired to a functional state by console modder Benjamin Heckendorn. In 2020 the Diebolds put the console on auction, which ended up being sold at $ 360,000 to collector Greg McLemore, the founder of Pets.com.

A second prototype unit was revealed in March 2025 to still be owned by Ken Kutaragi, the "father of the PlayStation" and former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment.[1] Unlike the other known prototype, Kutaragi's PlayStation has blue letters in its logo instead of grey and its button labels are in different locations.