The PlayStation is the brainchild of Ken Kutaragi. He had always been facinated with technology and had imagined how more impressive computer technology could enhance game systems. He invisioned a higher-level computer based game system and knew what to call it. He figured that if computers that were used for work were called "workstations" then the same technology when used for entertainment should be called a "PlayStation."
He realized that his vision of such a product was not shared with others at Sony and further identified that such radical change in market development often required an external influence. So rather than designing an entire gaming platform, he convinced the company to develop a piece of hardware that would interface with Nintendo's Super Famicom (the Japanese name for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System). This device, to be called the Playstation, was a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Famicom much like the Sega CD was for the Megadrive and Genesis.