Sony Computer Entertainment America's website 20 years ago looked absolutely wild.
Before the Internet as we know it today, there was the long-forgotten era of Web 1.0 – essentially meaning the time before businesses actively and widely used the Internet as a platform. During this transitional period to so-called Web 2.0, there were of course all kinds of experiments about how best to use this platform.
This has also led to the creation of great websites like the one on Sony Computer Entertainment America (later: Sony Interactive Entertainment) since 2001.
This is what Sony's early website looked like
Admittedly, Sony's website looked surprisingly good in 2001, but many sites at the time were downright ugly – gratuitous sentences and dancing gifs were still the rage back then.
Sony has clearly put a lot of effort into creating an exciting website and may have gone a little overboard.
You can see the website as it looked in 2001 on the ObsoleteSony
link to Twitter content
Here we are immediately bombarded with a lot of impressions: Gran Turismo 3 is announced through a looping video, you can vote for the best games, read news and message boards about the PS2, and of course you get a Pepsi ad.
The PlayStation logo and the controller's buttons, which act as menus, soar above the very busy background.
With all the stimuli, we hardly know where to look first. In direct comparison, Sony America's website from 1996 looks quite comfortable:
link to Twitter content
But we also have to say that looking at the design of this website that is over 20 years old also makes us feel a little nostalgic. Sony's website design may be much better today, but we no longer get such a wild experience as we did back then. This protects our eyes too, but it's still a bit of a shame.
Do you still know this old Sony website and how do you find the design compared to the modern Sony website?
