The end of Sony’s PlayStation 3 is now complete: the official Japanese PlayStation website now lists the standard 500GB unit (the only remaining PS3 model) as “shipment complete,” meaning Sony won’t be manufacturing or shipping out the console anymore.
We knew back in March that Sony would be discontinuing the PlayStation 3, which is no surprise as the console’s lifespan has actually exceeded the company’s original ten-year plan for it. Shipments to the U.S. ceased last year and production of new units for Japan were already over, but the final stockpiles have been sold or warehoused. No more PlayStation 3 shipments. Adios, cowboy.
That being said, the PlayStation 3 isn’t really dead. Thanks to Sony's PlayStation Now game streaming service, its library - the heart of any console - will live on in perpetuity. As of this March, exactly 483 PlayStation 3 games were available to play via streaming on PlayStation 4 and PC. While that’s only a small percentage of the more than 2000 games available on PlayStation 3 both in disc and digital form, Sony has continued to doggedly add to that number.
While streaming and cloud saves have their pros and cons, PlayStation Now and other similar services might be one of the only ways to ensure a library’s immortality. Your discs might be old, cracked and misplaced, your digital downloads might be trapped on a dusty console lost in a moving box somewhere, and none of them are probably worth even a token trade-in, but PlayStation Now lets you experience all those old PS3 games on newer, better platforms. It’s immortality with an upgrade.
The upgrade is, unfortunately, required - PlayStation Now will soon be exclusive to PC and PS4. You won’t be able to play those old gems on the platform they were intended for. While this may annoy purists and retro gaming fans, no one is stopping anyone from enjoying the robust secondhand market and purchasing physical copies of their favorite media (though if your fave niche game was digital-only and you still want to play it on a PS3, I guess you’re boned). And if you’ve been holding onto your PlayStation 3 because you’re broke, and you’re still broke after all this time, you have my sympathies, but not Sony’s support.
The PlayStation 3 launched in November of 2006 at a price of $499 (a 60 GB hard drive would cost players another $100 on top of that), which was nobody’s idea of a good time, no matter how good the Playstation 2 was. The console was also at first panned for a perceived paucity of games, but went on to sell over 84 million units worldwide. Exclusive titles and beloved new IP like Uncharted, The Last Of Us, Heavy Rain, LittleBigPlanet and Metal Gear Solid 4 helped make the PlayStation 3 a must-own console.
How do you feel about the PlayStation 3’s corporeal death? Will the PlayStation 3 live forever via its library on PlayStation Now or is that but a half-life, a cursed life? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
