A big plus was Sony's attitude to developers, my (edited) comment from when the Edge Online article was posted: The landscape into which it arrived: Games for

A big plus was Sony's attitude to developers, my (edited) comment from when the Edge Online article was posted: The landscape into which it arrived: Games for the successful cartridge based machines were selected and scheduled by Nintendo & SEGA. There were a limited number of slots per season - competition within genres was avoided, often in favour of in-house games or those from allied publishers. There was a wave of CD based machines at various levels of development. These were characterised by wince inducing hyperbole, a lack of attention to any of the media of which they were supposed to represent the convergence, and an inability to engage with the developers who had any chance of creating titles that would sell. I remember the first 3DO developer conference - big hotel bash - hot swag (why embroider an off-the-shelf shoulder bag when you can have one made exactly to your specs), Incomprehensible eulogies delivered by new-media 'visionaries', and, um, the chocolate CD. Meanwhile, the experienced games developers who were calling out the inadequacies of the hardware and OS were being told that they were irrelevant, and to shut up. This was not a happy place for games developers - stuck between the politics and uncertainty of the cartridge machines, and the approaching new-media desert. Into this arrived Sony: They had bought a UK game developer - Psygnosis, who had (IIRC, courtesy of SN Systems) sorted out a good set of PC based development tools with english documentation. Once they had something to show, they invited ~100 UK developers to Great Marlborough Street for a chat. Other than knowledge, the giveaways ran to a cup of coffee & a couple of biscuits (1). The tech. demos using a slow prototype (so T-Rex's head only) were fascinating, but other things were more significant: The attendance list demonstrated to those within it that Sony really 'got it' - this was a peer group of people who had made, and were making, games in the UK, and having assembled that audience, the Psygnosis staff (a part of that peer-group), explained how they wanted to help us make games - IIRC, not much persuading was needed. A memorable moment for me that captured that attitude was the opening of the first Devcon in London: Several hundred developers in a huge conference room - Phil Harrison(IIRC) walks onto the stage and casually asks if it is anyone's birthday today. A few hand's go up. "Happy Birthday - here, have a Playstation" and indeed, those bodies got machines (at that time, rarer than hen's teeth)) (1) There may also have been sandwiches.