Template:Portal:Sony PlayStation/Intro

The PlayStation family is the world's highest-selling group of video game systems. Sony Computer Entertainment released the PlayStation in 1994, followed by the PlayStation 2 in 2000, PlayStation Portable in 2004, PlayStation 3 in 2006, PlayStation Vita in 2011 and PlayStation 4 in 2013.

Sony's first foray into the video game market, the PlayStation (codenamed PSX during development, now known as PSone), was initially designed as an add-on for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super Famicom) video game console as an answer to Sega's Sega CD. When the prospect of releasing the system as an add-on dissolved, Sony transformed it into the standalone PlayStation video game console.

Sony's follow-up console, the PlayStation 2 (PS2), currently the world's best-selling console in history, was released in Japan on March 4, 2000 and in North America on October 26, 2000.

The PSP or PlayStation Portable is a handheld game console made by Sony Computer Entertainment; a first foray into the handheld gaming market which was previously dominated by Nintendo. Though it has not had as much as of an impact as the PlayStation home consoles, the PSP is noted as being the most successful competitor to Nintendo's handheld range yet.

November 2006 saw the launch of the PlayStation 3 (PS3), Sony's seventh generation game console. It uses a unique processing architecture called the Cell microprocessor, a technology jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The graphics processing unit, the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', was co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony – its main competitors were the Xbox 360 and the Wii.

The newest console in the PlayStation series is Sony's entry in the eighth generation of consoles, the PlayStation 4 (PS4), which launched in November 2013.