PlayStation Trivia
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49 free PlayStation trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free PlayStation trivia questions with answers. PlayStation began as a CD add-on for Nintendo's Super Famicom and ended up as the best-selling console brand in history. This quiz covers the whole story: Ken Kutaragi and the deal Nintendo broke at CES 1991, the logo, the launch against the Sega Saturn, the one-word '299' price reveal at the first E3, the DualShock and its four coloured buttons, the PS2's DVD drive and Emotion Engine, the PS3's Cell chip and $599 price, the PS4's share button, the PS5's DualSense and Astro's Playroom, plus the handhelds (PSP, PSP Go, Vita), the PocketStation, the PSX, PlayStation VR, PS Now, PS Plus and the Portal. Easy questions ask which company makes it and what the buttons look like. Medium ones cover launch years, rival consoles and best-selling games. Hard ones want the logo designer, the compensatory details of the Nintendo split, the price of the Slimline, the model that had an S-Video port and how many units the PS2 finally sold. Every answer has been checked against reference articles on the brand and each console, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Sony executive, later dubbed 'The Father of the PlayStation', conceived the console?
Ken Kutaragi
Ken Kutaragi had designed a console sound chip without his bosses' approval, and when senior executives turned against his PlayStation project it was moved out of Sony headquarters to keep it alive.
Q 02The PlayStation project grew out of a broken partnership with which company to build a CD-ROM add-on?
Nintendo
A day after Sony showed the 'Play Station' SNES-CD at CES 1991, Nintendo announced it was going with Philips instead.
Q 03Which Sega arcade hit convinced Sony to focus the PlayStation on 3D polygons rather than 2D sprites?
Virtua Fighter
Virtua Fighter settled Sony's debate over sprites or polygons: producer Ryoji Akagawa said that without Sega's 1993 hit the PlayStation 'probably would have had a completely different hardware concept'.
Q 04Which rival console reached Japanese shops eleven days before the original PlayStation in late 1994?
Sega Saturn
The Sega Saturn went on sale on November 22, 1994, eleven days ahead of the PlayStation's December 3 debut, yet Sony's machine went on to sell over 100 million against fewer than 10 million Saturns.
Q 05Which character, built to rival Mario and Sonic, became the original PlayStation's unofficial mascot in 1996?
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot was built by Naughty Dog because Sony had no mascot to set against Mario and Sonic; for much of production the team still called him Willie the Wombat.
Q 06What two words did Sony's Steve Race say on stage at E3 1995 to reveal the PlayStation's US price?
'Two ninety-nine'
'Two ninety-nine' was all Steve Race said before walking off to applause; it undercut by $100 the price a rival console maker had announced earlier at the same show.
Q 07Which PlayStation series, begun on the PS2 in 2005, has Kratos as its hero?
God of War
God of War began in 2005 with Kratos, a Spartan warrior who had pledged himself to Ares and then set out to kill him; later games moved their hero from Greek myth to Norse.
Q 08Which Namco arcade hit was the flagship launch game for the original PlayStation in Japan?
Ridge Racer
Ridge Racer loaded the whole race into memory while players shot through a round of Galaxian on the loading screen, so the disc could then be swapped for an audio CD.
Q 09Which racing game, at 10.85 million copies, was the original PlayStation's best seller?
Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo took Kazunori Yamauchi's team five years to build, then sold 10.85 million copies, more than any other game on the original PlayStation.
Q 10Which 1997 role-playing game, sold on three discs, was the original PlayStation's best-selling RPG?
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII needed three CDs for its cinematic scenes, which is why its makers moved the series off cartridge consoles to the PlayStation, where it sold over ten million copies.
Q 11The original PlayStation 3 logo borrowed its typeface from which Sony Pictures film series?
Spider-Man
Spider-Man's film typeface went on the PS3 at the insistence of PlayStation's chief, its designer said; Sony dropped it for the 2009 Slim because the long logo shrank too small on billboards.
Q 12The PlayStation company, SCEI, was formed in 1993 as a joint venture between Sony and which of its divisions?
Music
Music was the natural partner: the console team had been moved to Sony Music after senior executives opposed the project, and the label already knew how to press and sell discs.
Q 13What was the Net Yaroze, a black PlayStation sold by mail order from 1996?
A hobbyist programming kit
Q 21What non-game was the PlayStation 2's best-selling launch-period title in Japan?
A DVD of The Matrix
A DVD of The Matrix outsold every game in the launch period because the console's built-in DVD drive was cheaper than most standalone players, and many early buyers used it mainly for films.
Q 22Roughly how many units did the PlayStation 2 sell over its lifetime?
160 million
About 160 million PlayStation 2 units were sold, nearly triple its three rival consoles combined, and demand lasted so long that Sony kept building it until January 2013.
Q 23The best-selling PlayStation 2 game was which 2004 title?
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
A hobbyist programming kit, the Net Yaroze plugged into a home computer so that owners could write their own PlayStation games in C and share them with other members online.
Q 14Which tiny Sony gadget of 1999 was a PlayStation memory card with its own screen and buttons for minigames?
PocketStation
The PocketStation sold out in Japan, and Sony scrapped its overseas launch because it could not meet demand at home, though Final Fantasy VIII kept its PocketStation minigame abroad.
Q 15The smaller redesign of the original PlayStation, released in July 2000, was called what?
PS one
The PS one outsold every other console, including the brand-new PlayStation 2, for the rest of 2000, and Sony later sold a clip-on 5-inch LCD screen for it.
Q 16Which of these was the first PlayStation controller to include a pair of thumbsticks?
The Dual Analog
The Dual Analog went on sale in Japan in April 1997, and only seven months later, that November, the DualShock superseded it there.
Q 17On a PlayStation controller, pressing the two thumbsticks in like buttons triggers which pair of inputs?
L3 and R3
L3 and R3 are the clicks of the left and right sticks; the pad that launched with the console in 1994 had no sticks at all, so the pair arrived only with Sony's twin-stick pads of 1997.
Q 18Which of the four PlayStation face-button symbols is pink on the original control pad?
Square
Square was pink, with Triangle green, Circle red and Cross blue; designer Teiyu Goto meant the square to suggest a sheet of paper for menus and documents.
Q 19Sega stopped making consoles in 2001, months after the PlayStation 2 arrived, ending production of which machine?
Dreamcast
The Dreamcast launched strongly, but once the PlayStation 2 arrived its sales soured; in January 2001 Sega announced it would quit hardware and make games for its former rivals.
Q 20The PlayStation 2's custom central processor, co-developed with Toshiba, was called what?
Emotion Engine
The Emotion Engine was designed with Toshiba, and Sony later built the same chip into the first PlayStation 3 models so that they could run PS2 games.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold about 17.3 million copies on the PS2, even though its hidden 'Hot Coffee' scenes got it re-rated Adults Only and recalled in 2005.
Q 24A hacker intrusion in April 2011 forced Sony to switch off which online service for more than three weeks?
PlayStation Network
PlayStation Network went dark on April 20, 2011 after intruders reached the details of about 77 million accounts; Sony took almost a week to warn users, drawing criticism from governments.
Q 25The slimmer PlayStation 2 of 2004 built in which connection that the original console needed an add-on adaptor for?
Ethernet
Ethernet moved inside the Slimline because the thinner case had no room for the expansion bay that held the old network adaptor; for the same reason it could not take the internal hard drive.
Q 26What was the EyeToy, released for the PlayStation 2 in 2003?
A USB camera for motion-controlled games
The EyeToy was a USB camera for motion-controlled games, conceived when researcher Richard Marks saw a PlayStation 2 demo in 1999 and wondered what it could do with a cheap webcam; it sold over ten million.
Q 27The PlayStation 3's Cell processor was co-developed by Sony, Toshiba and which third company?
IBM
IBM designed the Cell with Sony and Toshiba at a joint centre in Austin, Texas, then adapted the chip's main core for Microsoft's rival Xbox 360 processor.
Q 28The PS3 was the first console to use which disc format as its primary storage medium?
Blu-ray
Blu-ray won its format war with HD DVD in 2008, helped by the millions of PS3s that doubled as players; Toshiba gave up on its rival format that February.
Q 29The 60 GB PlayStation 3 launched in the US at what infamous price?
$599
At $599 the 60 GB PlayStation 3 still sold at a loss: analysts at iSuppli put the cost of building each one at about $840.
Q 30The PS3's first official controller, which had motion sensing but no rumble, was called what?
Sixaxis
The Sixaxis, named for its six-axis motion sensing, dropped rumble during a patent dispute with Immersion; the DualShock 3 restored vibration in 2007 after a settlement.