The Reason Sony Made The PS1 Disc Black

Sony burst onto the scene with the PS1 and a unique looking game disc. Here's why Sony made the PS1 disc black.

Thanks for watching!

#PS1 #Sony #PlayStation

[LazyTallGuy]

Wish they kept that as their signature thing

[joshuawright]

Early PS2 discs were blue. Always thought that was cool.

[abletothink]

They actually did this a second time. Some PS2 games are actually printed on CDs and they're dyed blue. These are uncommon though because most PS2 games were too big to fit on a CD.

[JackHolleworth]

“Black ink is added to the plastic to give the CD its distinctive, cool PlayStation-only look. This also helps to protect the CD from illegal copying.”
-PlayStation Underground Issue 3 (trying their best to claim that it wasn’t just for looks)

[SkiesTurnedGrey]

I honestly completely forgot about that. How fun! I want it back.

[mrchrisknight]

I remember burning game discs back in the day, and they would not work on regular CDR had to be the black ones. You put in a regular disk until it loads up the Sony logo then swap out to burnt disk. Just need a pin in the part that tells the PS1 that the lid is closed.

[Killertamagotchi]

Another advantage to the black discs, which are actually a very dark violet, is that this type of disc was originally intended for audio and the coating protects the data layer better from UV radiation, which increases shelf life

[NiGHTS]

Yeah it was purely cosmetic. The PS2 also had blue discs if the game was on a CD instead of DVD. :)

[douglasbriel]

I assumed it was an extra protective coating due to children. Hahaha!

[bland]

I remember thinking that there must be something wrong/different with the gold Xbox discs and that's why those games aren't backwards compatible with the 360. Yeah the only games I had that weren't backwards compatible were all gold discs.

[blah]

People been talking about the black discs a lot recently and tbh, I never really noticed/thought about it when growing up.

[Rottyn]

"They thought it was cooler" and they were fucking right

[rasta-man]

When I see this console Driver (the game) always comes to my mind, it was one of the first videogames that I played on it.

[poohbearx]

Just a funny side effect that they read better, scatter less of the laser and therefore is a high fidelity read that a normal cd.

But let’s just say ‘it’s to be different’ because apparently better doesn’t cut it.

[Killerfun]

Great now I wanna play Syphon Filter again.

[TwesomE]

I also thought the same thing when i saw those black discs! It was screaming WE WANT TO SEEM UNIQUE!!! 😅

[tylern]

Maybe what they meant by copy protection is like physical discs cause if legit ones are black then you can clearly tell that PS1 game data on a regular disc is something that was tampered with to get it on there

[noelsilva]

I wish they kept the color black with all there systems. That be cool.

[deforged]

it wasn't a speculation. Sony themselves claimed it was for copy protection. did it prevent copying? no, but anyone that knew that they are supposed to be black and was sold a non black disc they'd know they were ripped off and could report it.

[TheTurnipKing]

It wasn't copyright protection so much as easy identification of counterfeit disks.

Copying CD's was relatively easy but it was a long time before blank media was awailable in colours.