I have read histories that focused on Nintendo, Sega, and Atari. Anyone got a recommendation for Sony?

Already have the following books:

*The Ultimate History of Videogames
*Replay
*Service Games Enhanced
*Atari Inc. - Business is Fun
*Game Over

Also read Console Wars, but that book...ugh. Mostly glam, little substance. :p

This isn't focused on Sony specifically, but you might be also interested in Generation XBox: How Videogames Conquered Hollywood. It is another "history of video games" book, but it's told from the perspective of the video game industry's love-hate relationship with cinema and Hollywood.

As a little mini-review, the book had some neat behind-the-scenes stories, especially about what happened with the Halo movie and how the Mario Bros. movie got messed up.

I'm the N64 generation......but admits that I have more fond memories with GameCube/PS2/Xbox days.

Thanks to Rampancy and A Jill Sandwich, I am getting two new books to leaf through. :)

The title is a little misleading; it's basically a telling of the history of video games going all the way back to the early Atari days, chronicling how, even from the very beginnings of the video game industry, developers were trying to chase after film and cinema. It even looks at it from the opposite angle: how movie companies tried to bank on video games with their own "Interactive Entertainment" divisions. The basic premise is that everyone tried to chase after what was thought to be the Holy Grail of Entertainment: a product which had the interactivity of a video game, but the immersive quality, production values, and graphical fidelity of a feature length blockbuster Hollywood movie.

It's actually got a lot of interesting stuff about the rise and fall of FMV games (espcially platforms like the 3DO and Sega CD which tried to capitalize on them), and the aftermath of notorious FMV titles such as Night Trap. The section on video game cinema adaptations is also worth reading, if only to gain some insight into what was going through Nintendo's minds when they greenlit the Mario Brothers movie.

I think Sega CD gets too much of a bad rep because there are actually games that took advantage of the system to its fullest. Popful Mail with its fully voice acted cutscenes. Soul Star and its steller sprite graphics and CD quality soundtrack.

While you're reading Game Development history, you should check out the following that you don't have listed :
- Masters of Doom
- Jacked
- Racing the Beam (somewhat redundant since you read another on Atari, but this may cover different aspects)
- Dungeons and Dreamers (covers a lot of RPG creators including Richard Garriott and Gary Gygax)
- Nintendo Magic (Almost an unofficial sequel to Game Over and, in many ways, just as good)
- Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution
- The Xbox 360 Uncloaked Yeah, Console Wars was complete crap and killed my love of reading for a good long while.