Sony's PlayStation: The End of the Game Industry

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The PlayStation was billed as an arcade killer, but it became so much more than that over time. Before the PlayStation launched, the arcade industry was back up to about seven billion dollars a year globally. By the end of the decade, it's down to two billion dollars. It drops by 60 percent in just a few short years and it's all due to the PlayStation.

Sega and the Genesis was THE underdog story of the early 90’s. In a single console generation, Sega went from ~zero to 50% US market share and dethroned Nintendo’s seemingly invincible global monopoly. But — somehow — it all then died. Two console generations later Sega was out of the hardware game entirely, and the company was sold off for pieces to a pachinko manufacturer. How on earth did this happen??

Today we’re launching Acquired Shorts in order to tell this story and others like it: side tales from the “Acquired Cinematic Universe” that are too brief for a full episode, but too good to leave in the vault. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the format (and this episode). Please send us your feedback in Slack, email or Twitter!

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