From Bedrooms to Billions: The Playstation Revolution

So, finally, after looking forward to this for at leat 2 years and a constantly pushed back released date, I got to watch FBTB: The PlayStation Revolution! I loved the first 2. Very insightful and full of great characters that the 80s seemed to have in droves.

When I seen the runtime at just over 2hrs 40mins I was extremely happy. I'm a PlayStation generation guy and was looking forward to some nostalgia. It was there, but even by the end I wasn't as satisfied as I was with the 2 FBTB's before.

I expected much more in depth looks at the amazing range of games like "Resident Evil", "Metal Gear Solid" and "Gran Turismo". There were small segments maybe ranging from 3/7minutes but I wanted more.

I enjoy most of the tech stuff but felt there was far too much emphasis on this. Kinda like when a movie spends too much time character building and before you know it, the movies nearly done.

The Caulfield's no doubt know how to make brilliant documentaries but this didn't hit the limit their previous work done and that's a shame. Don't get me wrong, I'd still highly recommend it and look forward to watching it again with my 12 year old son who is PlayStation mad and will love it.

I suppose I'm maybe being a bit harsh due to my own thoughts on what I wanted to see but all I can do is give an honest opinion.

Keep up the work though, guys. I look forward to seeing more documentaries in the future.

I've watched all three Bedrooms to Billions films this week and that may have intensified some of my negative feelings about this most recent entry. The Playstation Revolution starts off in much the same fashion as its immediate predecessor, with a deep and technical examination of the birth of the PS1. And crucially, as the filmmakers did so successfully with their Amiga film, the context in which this development took place is a key part of the story.

But then that part of the story comes to an end and then we start to skip through what to my eye looked increasingly like promo (or even propaganda) for the Playstations 2 through 4. It's already a very long film so I understand why additional length might not have been desirable for anyone, but the story of the PS3's Cel processor, while touched on here, isn't really explored, so why include it at all? What made this chip so revolutionary but so hard to program for? I dunno, because it was... And if we pass beyond the era of PS1, surely we now need to bring Xbox into the story for context and comparison. By the time we reach the PS4 section we've descended into pure corporate promo.

If you enjoyed BtB 1&2 you'll like the first section of this film. It's just a shame the filmmakers couldn't show more restraint and confidence in that aspect of this story as they ultimately morph from documentarians into advertisers.

(All that said, I'd still watch a BtB4.)

If you're looking for a great documentary to highlight PlayStation's launch, this is the one for you, but be prepared to hear the point in English, then the same point in Japanese twice more right afterwards.

E.g.: English: "We wanted to launch and sell 100,000 units in Japan day 1, that'd be a good number for us". Followed by the Japanese version right after that took over 4 minutes: "Normally Sony only launches with 5000-6000 units for a new product launch, but PlayStation we wanted to launch with 100,000 units, which is not something Sony normally does. So that's different from normal. So we had to change a lot to do that. We had to produce in mass quantity, which is not something Sony does - so it was quite different from what we did at that time. Then we had to deliver those units to the stores for sale". No new valuable information from this entire section of the film and an utter waste of time IMO. This process repeats...A LOT.

By the middle of the documentary, I was just fast forwarding through every piece with Japanese speakers as it was always 100% repetitious.

This is a great documentary - hard to even call it a documentary it really is more of a really fun joyride taking the viewer on trip though the history of Playstation and game development.

Loved the direction, the interviews, the clips and the story telling. It was a pleasure to watch!

This is a good movie, and had some good interviews with the Japanese developers and creators. That said I felt that the structure of the movie was a bit disjointed, I got that they needed to talk about how 3D was new and designing for it meant a lot of experimentation and discovery for developers but they talked about that before the launch, it made me think they were totally skipping over the launch and the way the PlayStation was marketed. As someone aware of the general timeline I was able to piece it together but it did seem a bit unusual to me to pace it like this. And though it's not a Sega documentary, it never came back around to how much the PlayStation blew the Saturn out of the water, especially outside of Japan, it left it hanging. The last third which covered the PS2 onwards felt a bit rushed and lightweight, and the PSP/Vita were never mentioned at all. Really the story of the PS2/3/4 etc. Could be a story unto itself, I felt there was a lot more that could have been said about the original PlayStation and its landmark games and their development that could have set up the second documentary covering the PS2 onwards era.

I still enjoyed it but not as much as the first Bedroom to Billions documentary, I had similar feelings about the Amiga documentary - that seemed to trail off on the fate of Commodore and the Amiga.

A fine addition to the B2B series but not without flaws.