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A prototype Nintendo PlayStation controller, an ultra-rare artifact of the short-lived partnership between Sony and Nintendo, scored $35,000 at an auction organized by Heritage House in Dallas, Texas on August 23.
The controller belongs to the original 200 Nintendo PlayStation units ever produced in gaming history, which are believed to have been mostly destroyed after the partnership fell through. It is also the first of the controllers to have been sold as a single item and only the second to appear at an auction.
Discovered by Dan Diebold in 2015, the first one was paired with a Nintendo PlayStation console to complete the set and was listed in a public auction in February 2020. In the following month, it landed in the hands of its new owner for a whopping price of $360,000—going $10,000 over its listing price.
Nintendo PlayStation controller at auction
Heritage House posted the historical gaming controller on its listing page and included a description of its design. “This prototype…is designed with the familiar casing of a Super Nintendo controller but is branded with ‘Sony PlayStation’ in dark gray on the front and features much smaller “Sony PlayStation Controller” text on the back in the same color as the controller.”
The auction house also added that the back design includes a “Nintendo Super Famicom Controller” mark, which indicates it was intended for the Japanese market.
Besides that, the description also stated that the $35,000 controller was sold “as-is with no returns,” with a warning that there is no guarantee whether or not it functions due to the lack of hardware to test it.
However, the controller was described to be in good shape regardless of its functionality. “It appears to be in very nice condition, with a few tiny dings on the back. The buttons appear to have seen little to no use,” the auctioneer explained.
Heritage House clarified that it is not unsure about any more potential offerings related to the Nintendo PlayStation in the future considering the incredible rarity of the controller.
Nintendo and Sony: A History
The collaboration between the two gaming giants happened in 1988 when Nintendo commissioned Sony to build a cartridge-based console called CD-ROM for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and another console compatible with SNES cartridges and CDs.
Tom’s Hardware noted that the original nature of the partnership deal would grant Sony unequal power over Nintendo’s characters and property, which the latter did not approve of. This disagreement and other reasons drove The Big N away, leaving the Nintendo PlayStation console in its prototype phase.
While Nintendo jumped ship with Philips to work on the doomed Philips CD-I, Sony continued its CD-based console that eventually became the classic PlayStation 1 console rolled out in Japan two years later.
The gaming history shows that Sony would then find success in traditional controller-in-hand consoles with its PlayStation series. Still, the Big N managed to stay afloat in the industry, primarily thanks to its Nintendo Switch.
