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Nintendo Play Station: the prototype SNES-CD console purchased for $ 360,000 by a collector

One of a kind, the Nintendo Play Station prototype has just been sold at auction. The game console, symbol of the aborted union between Nintendo and Sony, soared for almost $ 360,000.

It was in 1991, in the heyday of Super NES. Nintendo then decided to partner with Sony to bring a CD-ROM drive to its console. The SNES-CD, also called Play Station, was born. The project, however, was overturned for dark stories of rights, leaving Sony on the window, but causing in fact the development of the first Play Station, (whose second version has just celebrated its 20th anniversary). Of the 200 or so prototypes of Nintendo Play Station produced at the time, only one remained, which therefore flew at auction for a small fortune.

A “good deal” for his American buyer

The happy buyer, Greg McLemore, a fifty-something American who made a fortune by buying and then reselling the domain names Toys.com and Pets.com in 1999 at the start of the Internet era, did not hesitate to spend 360 $ 000 to afford this unique collector’s item. This will join his personal collection already made up of around 800 arcade machines, including the very rare Computer Space of 1971, terminal of the first video game marketed in series. This auction makes the Nintendo Play Station the most expensive video game object ever sold. Greg McLemore is well aware of the value of his property: “It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought, except a house”, he said by email to CNN Business. He nevertheless stated that he did “a good deal” : “It was worth it, especially when combined with the rest of my collection, which tells a story that I want to save for society.”

His salesman Terry Diebold, on the other hand, can bite his fingers, he who had refused an offer of $ 1.2 million, having preferred to put his console up for auction hoping to get a lot more money. He will still have reaped quite a profit, because his Play Station had cost him only $ 75 in 2009, during an auction of property of the company Advanta, then in compulsory liquidation. A company owned by Olaf Olafsson, founding president of Sony Computer Entertainment, who had left this prototype there with unexpected value.

Exhibitions and a museum under study

If Terry Diebold had traveled the world to present the Nintendo Play Station at various events, Greg McLemore also does not intend to keep the console for his own personal pleasure. He plans to present it at various exhibitions and eventually plans to open a museum to display his collection, and thus testify to the evolution of video games and the influence of arcade games and early games on the innovation that followed. A beautiful project that will certainly cost much more than the $ 360,000 spent on a single console.

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