A rare controller prototype for the Nintendo PlayStation has sold at an auction house in Dallas, Texas, for a cool $35,000. Heritage Auctions moved the controller, billed as one of the most important pieces of gaming history, originally developed as part of the short-lived Sony and Nintendo collaboration back in the late 1980s. Although the selling price was impressive, the functionality of the controller remains unclear since it was sold untested.
The collaboration between the two companies led to a peripheral add-on: a CD-ROM attached to the SNES, which played both cartridges for SNES and its CD-ROM games. It was intended to be part of a hybrid console, but it never left development. Therefore, this controller is an interesting piece of gaming history that not many know about.
Although it is called a controller in “very nice condition” with minimal wear and only minor dings, it has not been tested for functionality. The present sale underlines how rare such prototypes are and how valuable they can be, even if their practical use is unknown. As an artifact, that price fetched in the auction reflects how important it was.
The failure of this collaboration between Sony and Nintendo meant that Sony would later produce its own PlayStation consoles autonomously. A lot of the prototypes from this era never reached the public eye and are now highly in demand by collectors. This controller remains one of those testaments to what could have been one of the big-name collaborations in gaming.
