Nostalgia Sells: New Consoles That Look Like Old Consoles
Companies can make money in the present by selling the past.
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If you weren't in the know, you may have missed that today is the 20th Anniversary of the original PlayStation. It's been 20 years since Sony made its first entry in the home console market. Two decades since the reigning kings of consoles were Nintendo and Sega and the Game Boy was the only major source of portable gaming. A lot has changed.
To celebrate the original PlayStation, Sony is offering a limited 20th Anniversary Edition of the PlayStation 4. The system is a basic PlayStation 4 system, vertical stand, controller, and PlayStation Eye, all colored in the same grey as the original PlayStation. The PlayStation logos on the hardware come in the original PlayStation four-color tones and Sony has etched the PlayStation button symbols into the bottom of the system.
The system does look great and it tugs at my heartstrings ever so slightly. Sadly, it's limited to only 12300 units, each with a small aluminum plaque letting purchasers know which number they are in the print run. If you care about grabbing one, Sony is going to be giving pre-order details at the PlayStation Experience keynote on Saturday, December 6.
This isn't the only recent console to sport a nostalgic paint job to draw people in. Nintendo has already released one 3DS sporting the colors of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and the company has a new 3DS on the horizon with the Super Nintendo's color scheme. All we'd need is an Xbox One in original Xbox black/green with a Duke controller and we'd have a complete trifecta.
The interesting thing with these consoles is how light the nostalgic connections are in each case. They only pay lip-service to their original counterparts, with the details being completely ignored. If Sony wanted to go all in, they could've switched out the blue LED for a green one. The PlayStation logo is four-toned on the new Dual Shock 4, but on the original Dual Shock, it's simply grey. On the NES-style 3DS, Nintendo changed the button colors and slapped an NES controller decal on the hood, when they could've gone all-in and made the whole thing look like an NES controller. This is all nitpicking of course, but I'm trying to point out minimal the nostalgic cues are.
And it still works. I want every system above. I mean, I'm not spending $400+ on another PlayStation 4 or $200 on another 3DS, but in theory I would totally buy those systems. Even the barest of connections causes us to remember old memories.
A 3DS in white, red, and black makes you remember the first time you put your favorite game in the NES, rentals at Blockbuster, cheating for the first time with the Game Genie, and blowing on the cartridge. Another 3DS with colored buttons reminds you of Yoshi's first appearance, early polygon action with the Super FX chip, or owning friends on Bomberman with the Super Multi-Tap. A PS4 is stark grey wants to remind us of all the things we mentioned in our PlayStation 20th Anniversary article. These are moments from our memories, things that help define who we are today, so we want to recapture that.
People will pay to remember the past, again and again. If you have the history behind you, like Nintendo and Sony do, you might as well use it. So I expect we'll keep seeing nostalgia bait consoles in the same way we get HD remasters and collections. Nostalgia is a good business model.