Nintendo Playstation, one of 200 rare console prototypes from 1992, found a buyer: The hardware auction at Heritage Auctions ended today, March 8, 2020, with one final bid of $ 360,000.
The auction proceeds are therefore well below the expectations of the original owner Terry Diebold, who bought the Nintendo Playstation in 2009 together with a box of possessions from a former Sony employee for $ 75.
What exactly is the Nintendo Playstation?
The Nintendo Playstation is the only surviving prototype of a Super Nintendo with CD drive, which arose from a cooperation between Nintendo and Sony and was supposed to succeed the SNES. However, because both companies split up shortly after the prototype was developed and Sony instead launched its own console with the Playstation, the Nintendo Playstation never saw the light of day as a finished product.
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Nintendo PlayStation – Rare prototype worth $ 75 back then, now millions
The Nintendo Playstation has features of the SNES and the Sony Playstation, but also a number of its own features:
- Slot for SNES and Super Famicom games
- functional CD-ROM drive with display that can play music CDs (software was probably never developed for the drive)
- Aux connector and volume control
- two controller ports
- AV-Out, S-Video, SNES-Multi-Out and port labeled NEXT, the purpose of which is unclear
- SNES controller with Sony Playstation logo
Why did the owner want to sell the collectible?
Before the start of the auction at Heritage Auctions, Terry Diebold stated that he could not afford to "continue losing money" by traveling around the world with the console and presenting it as a curiosity:
"I spent a lot of work traveling around with (the prototype) and we didn't make anything out of it. Every trip we took with it cost us money out of our own pockets."
Diebold had therefore already declined the purchase offer from a Norwegian, who had offered him a sum of $ 1.2 million for the prototype of the Nintendo Playstation. The sum just covers taxes and debts, according to the prototype owner.
The actual proceeds of $ 360,000 make the Nintendo PlayStation so the most expensive console in the world. Nevertheless, Diebold only achieved a third of the price the Norwegian had offered him at the auction – in retrospect, he should be rather disappointed.
