A notice on the official Japanese PlayStation website states that production of PlayStation 3 will be ending soon, probably around the end of of March.
Following the wildly successful PlayStation 2 the third console had a rocky start with developers struggling with new custom architecture, and consumers were left baffled by a series of adverts featuring clowns and ballerinas rather than showing off the powerful console. The Xbox 360 raced in terms of sales and Sony faced a long struggle to catch up.
PlayStation 3 was the first console I bought “day one” and, as I was feeling a bit flash at the time, I forked out for a 52″ HD TV to go with it which cost £2,300 at the time. You’ll be surprised to hear both my 60gb, backwards compatible launch PS3 and the TV are still going strong, the PS3 has had a couple of blu-ray drives but the TV is faultless, not a single dead pixel.
PlayStation 3 was also the reason why I searched the internet to find a good website to keep me updated with news, reviews and features, so I also have PS3 to thank for bringing me to TSA and making lots of new friends.
Cheers PlayStation 3, enjoy your retirement.
Source: Gematsu
TSBonyman
Picked up a 60Gb at launch, when it went ylod 2 years later i booked a refurb replacement but couldn’t wait the two weeks required for delivery – so i went and bought one of the last 160Gb Phats. The refurb subsequently arrived, got tested and returned to it’s box as it was too precious to use! :)
I had many good hours with PS3, it was also great for browsing the internet on my tv … which soon led me here to TSA – after experiencing the fanboy/immaturity of some more official forums this was a much more welcoming place to be.
Awayze
It is surprising your PS3 is still going strong. Mine got ylod under 3 years
freezebug2
I still own a Phat original 60GB with backwards compatability….albeit the third iteration due to a few YLOD’s and by way of the ‘Continuous Play – pink box’ service that I took out donkeys years ago! It doesn’t get any use these days but it is still serviceable.
Looking at that and comparing with my slim PS3 and the now slim PS4 that I own, it was fookin massive – and loud! :P
RIP mighty console!
camdaz
I wonder how many PS3 consoles have been sold over the years?
All I can find is as of November 2013 Sony reported 80 million sold, 3.4 million were shipped in 2014 and 0.4 million in the first quarter of 2015. So that’s a total of 83.8 million by the end of Q1 two years ago.
Tuffcub
Yeah it’s around 85m.
matthangzhou
Puts into perspective that the Wii U production has already closed but this is still going strong.
MrYd
Looks like the Wii U sales, worldwide, in it’s entire life, are about what the PS3 did in it’s first 4 years. Just in the US. The place where MS were winning.
Starman
I read yesterday that Nintendo had a measly 5% of the console market for 2016. So wii u production ending isn’t too surprising.
Dave Irwin
I’ll never forget when my phat PS3 died. I was playing Uncharted 2 I think at the time. Got right to the Tibetan ruins and had a walk up a long set of stairs. When I opened the door to the next “area”; nothing. The background was still there, but no textures, no floor, no enemies, etc. If I took one step beyond the stairs, I’d fall through the world to my demise. I reloaded the save and everything up to that point went fine. Opening the door, same issue.
Thinking it was just a problem with that disc (I was renting at the time), I loaded up another PS3 game and low and behold the disc wouldn’t read. Tried with a PS2 and PS1 game, same issue. Sadly, the unit was out of warranty and Sony said they couldn’t fix it, which meant my PS2 collection had to go. The collection included Persona 4, Dragon Quest VIII, and a select few other games I’d consider essential. I finally replaced like-for-like the entire collection this year when DQ8 came out on 3DS. That’s a long time to be waiting to complete a game.