was] like being released from jail in terms of the freedom you have". Another strategy that helped attract software developers was the PlayStation's use of the CD-ROM format instead of traditional cartridges. In contrast to other disc-reading consoles such as the 3DO, the PlayStation could quickly generate and synthesise data from the CD since it was an image-generation system, rather than a data-replay system. The PlayStation's architecture and interconnectability with PCs was beneficial to many software developers. The use of the programming language C proved useful during the early stages of development as it safeguarded future compatibility of the machine should developers decide to make further hardware revisions. Sony used the free software GNU C compiler, also known as GCC, to guarantee short debugging times as it was already familiar to many programmers. Despite the inherent flexibility, some developers found themselves restricted due to the console's lack of RAM. While working on beta builds of the PlayStation, Molyneux observed that its MIPS processor was not "quite as bullish" compared to that of a fast PC and said that it took his team two weeks to port their PC code to the PlayStation development kits and another fortnight to achieve a four-fold speed increase. An engineer from Ocean Software, one of Europe's largest game developers at the time, thought that allocating RAM was a challenging aspect given the 3.5 megabyte restriction. Kutaragi said that while it would have been easy to double the amount of RAM for the PlayStation, the development team refrained from doing so to keep the retail cost down. Kutaragi saw the biggest challenge in developing the system to be balancing the conflicting goals of high performance, low cost, and being easy to program for, and felt he and his team were successful in this regard. Launch Sony released the PlayStation in Japan on 3 December 1994, a week after the release of the Sega Saturn, at a price of . Sales in Japan began with a "stunning" success with long queues in shops. It sold 100,000 units on the first day and two million units within six months, although the Saturn outsold the PlayStation in the first few weeks due to the success of Virtua Fighter. By the end of 1994, 300,000 PlayStation units were sold in Japan compared to 500,000 Saturn units. After a while, a grey market emerged for PlayStations, which were shipped from Japan