Sony's first entry in the video game console wars, 1995's icon PlayStation (aka PS1, PS One, PSX), was extremely successful and by 1998 became Sony's best selling product in their entire 50-year history.
The PlayStation featured proprietary video compression hardware called MDEC. The MDEC unit was integrated directly into the console and was responsible for the smooth, high-quality full-screeen FMV seen in games like BoomBots and The X-Files.
