Nintendo PlayStation Prototype Sold For Rs2.6 Crore At Auction

A Nintendo PlayStation prototype has been recently sold for $360,000 (about Rs2.6 crore) at an auction. It is also supposed to be amongst the most expensive video game consoles to be sold at public auctions.

Apart from the Nintendo PlayStation, Heritage Auctions offered many other expensive video game products at its auctions. Speaking of the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, it was the product to mark the short-term collaboration between Nintendo and Sony. The last auction directly took place at the Headquarter of Heritage Auction in Dallas, Texas, and accordingly, the auctioneers were allowed to join the auction via phones or the Internet.

Released in 1991, the unit called the Nintendo PlayStation marked Sony’s first effort on manufacturing a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) with an integrated CD-ROM drive. It helps expand the 16-bit Nintendo system’s ability to play CD games.

However, the collaboration between Nintendo and Sony then came to nothing, making the Nintendo PlayStation prototype never mass-produced. Sony then decided to enter its own way into the gaming industry with the release of the 1994 PlayStation that we have now got familiar with.

Back to the Nintendo PlayStation prototype, it initially belonged to Olaf Olafsson, the former president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and then was bought at an auction by Terry Diebold. Diebold kept it in his loft until 2015 - when his son discovered this unit and revealed it to the netizens on Reddit. Diebold then toured the world with this prototype and showed it at a variety of classic game exhibitions. It is said that Terry Diebold refused an offer worth $1.2M (about Rs8.8 crore) to sell it before the auction.

The Nintendo PlayStation auction took place at the beginning of this year. Bids reached $350k at one point, but then fell to $280k on Thursday afternoon after bidders all seemingly gave up. Palmer Luckey, the founder of VR Oculus, also joined the auction. He revealed on Twitter that he wanted to buy it with the hope to preserve the unidentified PlayStation.

The Nintendo PlayStation prototype was then sold for $360k (Rs2.6 crore) and now, it belongs to Greg McLemore, the founder of Pets.com - a website that was launched in the 1990s. Greg McLemore earned a lot thanks to this website, as well as other websites, and he often buys old game consoles, games, and many other gaming products. In an interview with Forbes, McLemore revealed that he plans to create a museum to store his huge collection of arcade machines or game consoles.