What is Sony's most iconic product? Walkman or PlayStation

More iconic sony product

  • Total voters
    398
Iconic as in recognizeable and well known?

Cause we've had flight attendants call the bomb squad cause they got scared seeing a walkman left behind...
 
All the Playstation consoles so far sold more than 500 million units (probably closer to 600), while the Walkman+Discman devices sold around 400 million units.

In practice the Playstation brand lives longer than the Walkman, so in all parameters it wins
 
Asking this question on a video game forum is going to get you one answer. If you ask it on an a/v forum you'll probably get a different answer.
 
Walkman was unique. PlayStation used to mean something, but at this point it's been a screen less gaming laptop for over half of its life. They made a wrong turn after PS2.
 
Black_Stride said:
I remember when the PSX launched.......I also remember literally everyone having a Walkman, even if it was made by Panasonic because no one even knows what to call the actually device, the brand became the thing.
The Playstation isnt synonymous with videogame console.
Walkman is literally synonymous with [what do you call that device?]
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A Portable Cassette Player.
And yes Walkman is synonymous with anything portable that plays music with headphones.
But saying Playstation isn't synonymous with video games is ingenious.
It's not associated with anything else, people know you are talking about a games console and you're girlfriend is still gonna say you're playing on your playstation when you have a Xbox, same with everyone else who doesn't know better.
But the topic isn't about what people use a brand name to call a whole product line regardless of make.
It which is more Iconic.
One has been iconic for 30 years, the other hasn't.
It's still a iconic product of the time. But it hasn't been an iconic product from launch to this day and is still synonymous within the industry still.
 
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When walkmans are talked about from a pure mp3 standpoint it covers all bases, the Walkman name use to be the best in the industry, at one point I had a NWZ Walkman in the day of age where smart phones were starting to emerge.
 
Moonjt9 said:
People not saying the Walkman are too young to understand the poll tbh.
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I'm not but I grew up poor in a poor neighborhood. We couldn't afford Walkman so we go those crappy Dollar Tree knock offs. One year, my parents bought me a Talk Boy and that was my main way to listen to tapes until I got a portable CD player, which also wasn't a Walkman but some POS that skipped if it wasn't always upright. So we just called them "tape deck" and "CD player" lol. Same reason when I wore L.A. Lights, I didn't call my shoes Nike. They're not the same.
 
Comparing peak to peak (the only way to compare it) you can watch almost any movie from 1980 to 2000 and catch a glimpse of someone using a walkman, protagonist or not.
 
The Walkman had a huge impact insofar as it being a mainstream, portable music player. The brand itself was trendy for a few years, but that was about it - it really didn't last that long. PlayStation has remained relevant for decades, and it also had a huge cultural impact early on. Easily the PS brand.
 
In it's day, Walkman for sure. It was a universal term for portable audio device.

PlayStation didn't fully push everything else out like Walkman did. My parents still call playing videogames, "playing Nintendo."
 
Danny Dudekisser said:
The Walkman had a huge impact insofar as it being a mainstream, portable music player. The brand itself was trendy for a few years, but that was about it - it really didn't last that long. PlayStation has remained relevant for decades, and it also had a huge cultural impact early on. Easily the PS brand.
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Sony completely changed the way people consume music when they released the Walkman and the entire industry changed in the wake of this product.

I look at it this way. Sony created a new market with the Walkman, a new way to consume media. As successful as the PlayStation was and is, it was released into a market that was several generations deep into existence.
 
Kagoshima_Luke said:
In it's day, Walkman for sure. It was a universal term for portable audio device.

PlayStation didn't fully push everything else out like Walkman did. My parents still call playing videogames, "playing Nintendo."
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lol... i had relatives like that. I remember being a kid and the neighbor's mom or grandmom would be like "stop playing them Mary-ohss" in this crazy accent. What is weird is my mom, 70, calls all video games "xbox" , "how is your xbox?" Thing is i never owned an xbox until 2023. When I was a kid, and got systems for xmas/bd, xbox wasn't a thing. Last console I got from her was the ps1 for xmas 1998. I was 20. I don't know where she got the association to xbox from. Maybe TV. The nintendo thing would make more sense, (or even atari), considering that is what I was given as a kid in the 80s.
 
To me the measure is whether or not people are using your brand name when referring to competitor's products, or as a catch-all for that type of product. For example "I need to Xerox it" when copying documents. People absolutely did that with Walkman. Every portable radio/cassette player was referred to as a Walkman back in the 80s and 90s, didn't matter who made it. With videogames, I have seen this happen with both Nintendo and Playstation, but much more often with Nintendo than Playstation. Therefore I would put Walkman above Playstation, even though Playstation is a huge brand and has been relevant longer than Walkman was.

Trinitron was huge too. Nobody called TVs Trinitrons, but almost everyone knew that Sony Trinitron was the go-to for a quality TV.
 
12345666 said:
Sony completely changed the way people consume music when they released the Walkman and the entire industry changed in the wake of this product.

I look at it this way. Sony created a new market with the Walkman, a new way to consume media. As successful as the PlayStation was and is, it was released into a market that was several generations deep into existence.
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That's a totally fair point. That said, even if gaming was several generations in, I'd argue it was the PlayStation that allowed it to shift from being perceived as a "toy" for kids into a mainstream electronics device that sat closer to movies. It didn't change the way people played games like the Walkman changed how people consumed music, but it did change the way games were made, who they were made for, and how the industry as a whole was perceived.
 
Walkman…Gaming hasnt change dramatically (add storage device (floppy, cd, dvd, bluray) into the gaming machine…et voile), while the walman pioneered the advancement in the on-the-run listening devices.
 
Danny Dudekisser said:
That's a totally fair point. That said, even if gaming was several generations in, I'd argue it was the PlayStation that allowed it to shift from being perceived as a "toy" for kids into a mainstream electronics device that sat closer to movies. It didn't change the way people played games like the Walkman changed how people consumed music, but it did change the way games were made, who they were made for, and how the industry as a whole was perceived.
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100%

I was entering my teenage years in 1995 when the PSX was released in the US. It was perfect timing for me as my tastes began to mature. Graduating from Mario Kart to Gran Turismo, Contra to Resident Evil, and so on. Sony also brought a "cool" factor to console gaming that didn't really exist beforehand, at least not in a natural sort of way. It made all the silly commercials and adverts before it look sort of ham fisted and dated in retrospect.
 
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geary said:
Walkman…Gaming hasnt change dramatically (add storage device (floppy, cd, dvd, bluray) into the gaming machine…et voile), while the walman pioneered the advancement in the on-the-run listening devices.
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Are you serious? LOL! Playstation changed the whole game once they hit the scene. They took gaming in your house from being a "kids thing" to something everybody does between the ages of 4-69 years old.
 
mckmas8808 said:
Are you serious? LOL! Playstation changed the whole game once they hit the scene. They took gaming in your house from being a "kids thing" to something everybody does between the ages of 4-69 years old.
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I think you're attributing the arrival of the PSX with a maturation of the industry that would have happened regardless. The gaming industry was maturing by the early to mid 90s and the kids that had grown up playing arcade games, Atari/NES/SEGA etc throughout the 80s had grown up with it. It was always going to go in this direction.
 
Being a Sega guy and then an Xbox guy I have to say Walkman is more fondly remembered for me. For the past 10 years I've played more and more on PlayStation, and by now it's become such a big part of what Sony is. But looking further back... it's Walkman. The name is brilliant too.
 
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Walkman was cool and big for its time, but I'd say that when you think about portable music player you think of iPod first and foremost. So Playstation, which is a product in a category of very few console companies, is clearly much more iconic. If you mention Sony to someone they'll most likely think of Playstation before Walkman.
 
FeralEcho said:
In my country,Romania,every console pre PS3 was called a playstation. Even now,old people say playstation to other consoles so it depends on the country.
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Nah. Maybe it's limited to your friend circle or town because this is the first time that I'm hearing about it. In my hometown Cluj we were definitely aware about multiple home consoles since the 90s. We would frequent locations where we could pay by the hour to play on Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Then in the summer of 1997, I would play for the first time on a "Sony"... yeah, that is how we called for the first few years, the Sony instead of PlayStation. Maybe it was easier to spell it for us, non english speaking kids.
 
Walkman. It revolutionized the way people consume music. Being able to listen to music in such a compact player was simply not a thing before Walkman existed. Unfortunately it died because the way music is consumed has changed. Portable music player became redundant with smartphones.

Playstation, while immensely successful, does not have the same level of cultural impact as Walkman did to music.
 
When I was younger you could get in for free to watch Footloose if you brought in a walkman with you. That was a long ass time ago.

It's Playstation.
 
Walkman for me 100%. All those tapes on songs I'd put together for all my girlfriends in middle and high schools. The Walkman had a tremendous impact on my childhood, more so than the Playstation.
 
I'd argue playstation, as far as mp3 players go i'd say even Apple overshadowed them with the og ipod line
 
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Walkman started a revolution in how we listened to music. PlayStation improved on an already existing market. Based on that, I am going to say Walkman. I don't think there is a wrong answer though. Both are legendary products.
 
How could it be the walkman when the whole concept of portable music was eaten by the cellphone? What will eat Playstation?
 
I just have trouble answering Walkman because it's not just a dead product but a dead product category. A category that died a fairly quickly quite some time ago.

I think there's really no argument to be had against the idea that Walkman was more iconic in it's product category than Playstation has ever been though. It just... was. lol
 
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CosmicComet said:
Peak vs Peak was definitely Walkman.

Longevity wise, Playstation.
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I think it's a bit apples and oranges.

Walkman didn't have much competition.

It started in 1979 and was somewhat supplanted by discman, which came out in 1997, and faded into obscurity because they didn't pivot when mp3 took off and tried to push for their proprietary atrac3 players. The fall off directly lead from the iPod to the iPhone. They had every advantage and squandered it.

PlayStation on the other hand has been for the most part market leader since its inception in 1994. 30 years... despite significantly more established competition in the space, much of it coming before them.
 
IntentionalPun said:
I just have trouble answering Walkman because it's not just a dead product but a dead product category. A category that died a fairly quickly quite some time ago.

I think there's really no argument to be had against the idea that Walkman was more iconic in it's product category than Playstation has ever been though. It just... was. lol
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They've sold more playstations than they've sold walkman. Sony smashed a juggernaut in Nintendo and pushed Sega out of the market. They successfully kept at bay one of the richest companies in the world from dominating the market...
 
Iconic: Playstation
Revolutionary: Walkman

While the Walkman was once iconic, the transition to the MP3 was the beginning of the end of said status; hell at this point I'm not even sure the Ipod can claim to still be iconic.
 
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