All good ends sooner or later. Game console Sony PlayStation 3 went on sale in 2006, more than ten years ago. For Japanese consoles it was released a huge number of video games, including exclusive games like Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Gran Turismo 5, Demon’s Souls, God of War III, Heavy Rain, infamous, Killzone 2, MotorStorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, and many others. In its lifetime the console went through several revisions, constantly changing form, and has sold about 90 million boxes. 29 may, Sony announced that it would stop manufacturing consoles of the previous generation.
The first rumors that the Japanese manufacturer plans to end production of PlayStation 3, appeared in March of this year. Indeed, game consoles of the past generations were produced, as a rule, ten or so years (PS2 thanks to the great popularity lasted almost 13 years), after which platformtarget gradually reduced production, and then stopped him, redirecting resources to the production of the new generation of the device. The PlayStation 4 is now the leader of the eighth generation of video game consoles, confidently ahead in the race its chief rival, the Xbox One almost two times.
On this occasion, let us recall some interesting facts about the PlayStation 3, which I was able to assemble for our readers. At the time of market launch in 2006, PS3 was a very expensive device and was sold for an impressive $ 599. The high price was justifiable because the main architect of the console, Ken Kutaragi insisted that it was advanced at that time technology. For example, a Blu-Ray drive and an eight-core Cell processor, developed jointly by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. But not without serious engineering failures. Even a very high cost did not cover costs Sony to manufacture PlayStation 3, so initially the consoles were sold for less cost. It was planned to recapture the cost through the sale of video games, but plus Sony came out immediately. Thus, in just two years (2007-2008), the Japanese manufacturer has lost about $ 3 billion, and Ken Kutaragi was forced to leave his post at the company from making bad decisions.
Cell was too complex for most developers of video games, but Sony failed to release consoles to produce clear documentation explaining its features. Another weakness of the console was its memory, which amount was equal to only 256 megabytes. Even 256 megabytes was allocated for video memory graphics processor RSX created by NVIDIA. More flexible in terms of game development console competitor, the Xbox 360 is often demonstrated best graphics in multiplatform projects. However, over time the developers got used to the complex architecture of the Cell and features of the PS3, after which the light began to appear gorgeous from a technical and visual side of the game. To recall the Heavy Rain, The Last of Us or Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
Thanks to the power of the Central Cell processor and embedded Linux operating system (later Sony removed the OS from the consoles), several game consoles, the PlayStation 3 could be combined into a single supercomputer for a variety of complex research. This was actively used by many scientists and even the us military who bought a PS3 with hundreds or even thousands of boxes. Cost it came out much cheaper than the acquisition of this supercomputer and the computing capabilities of the PS3 provide them with the necessary resources. For example, the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of technology with consoles examined the activity of black holes and the properties of gravitational fields. And military Research laboratories USAF United 1760 consoles to process images obtained from satellites. The computing power of the PS3 was used, and the hackers. For example, in 2008, with 200 consoles the hacking group managed to crack the authentication Protocol of SSL.
The best selling game on the PlayStation 3 was that it is no wonder that Grand Theft Auto V PS3 Owners bought more than 20 million copies of this game. All in all, to date, has sold over 80 million copies of this game for different platforms. In 2010 for consoles was released the PlayStation Move controller, designed to control games with movements. Sony was not able to interest its users as it happened to Nintendo and its Wii console. However, the controller has received a second life with the release of the headset virtual reality PlayStation VR in 2016. Today Move is selling well, and Sony is quite pleased with these results. By the way, the PS3 supports up to seven connected controllers DualShock 3 or Sixaxis at the same time.
The PlayStation 3, marked on the first models of consoles was written with font Spider-Man Font. While Sony has been promoting the trilogy of films by Director Sam Raimi about spider-Man with Toby Maguire in the title role, it was therefore decided to use the font as additional advertising of the franchise. In 2009, the font has refused, completely changing the style of the game console. All in all, 2006 was released in three versions, the consoles (fat, slim and super slim), as well as many limited editions, released to release a separate video game. For example, the light appeared amazingly beautiful white console with Japanese-style patterns of tattoos of the Yakuza games Yakuza 3. And to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was released on a limited tactical console in an unusual colour.
Sony officially stopped production of the PlayStation 3
Sergey Grey