PS3 expected to live 10 years in the market?

Besides the original Game Boy platform, no system has ever lasted 10 years in the market. Pretty much straight up like that. But that apparently didn't stop Sony Computer Entertainment Prez Kenny Kutaragi from stating at PlayStation Meeting 2005 that they're "looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3" due to the transition to HDTV. Uh, ok, that's a little oblique—so how do they plan to accomplish this? Why, with "full HD features from the start so that consumers won't have to buy another version of the console in the future." Ahem. And what are we to conclude from this? Well, perhaps the money is in Ken's quote that "the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households," and, "I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive." Sorry for all the quotes, but we're just laying it down—with previous estimates hovering at about $400 per unit, should we take this as a possibility that the PS3 is getting a big price bump in the wrong direction, and might just perhaps be classing itself right out of the market? Hope not, but we don't even know what to expect anymore—execs tend not to whine about their gear being too expensive if at all possible.

[Via The Guardian]

[Dude @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

if this quote is correct - then sony is getting pretty damn arrogant about ps3 (or just turning apple inc. on us).

in any case, i do hope that xbox360 will increase its marketshare - sony needs a little *more* competition on their console.

[t3h_bob @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

this is why the revo will succeed this generation.

[Adam P @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

yet again, sony is screwing the pooch. keep it up ken, you're bound to go the way of the jaguar.

[Paul @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

$400.00 doesnt sound unreasonable if it has a blu-ray dvd included. i think it's smart forward thinking. there are enough people that will be crazy about the ps3 and buy it at that high price. in a year, or even 6 months, they can drop the price a bit and go from there.

i think its a smart move. we'll see tho - rarely does the best console become the most popular.

[Rob P @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

well with moores law, the price in 10 years will have dropped it from 400ish to 10 dollars. (haha, maybe not)
but really, wtf 10 years!?
i just dont see how any tech product can have a life cycle of 5+ years. espcicially with all the new advancments being made. wafer technology will be on a whole new ball game in 10 years.
maybe you can buy a ps3 in 5 years for 50 bucks and then link them all up together and make a ps3 farm.

[Luckett @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

ken kutaragi is an arrogant prick...if no one noticed this yet.
the kraziness of ken kutaragi
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/kutaragi/070705_kutaragi_01.x

[Cullen @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i hope this buries sony. i really dislike them.

[evo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i think all this means is that sony wants the ps3 to remain relevant to the gaming market for 10 years, not that they'll be selling units for that long. if you think about the n64, genesis, and even the original playstation, these platforms are still of interest to gamers. the interest and adoration generations of game players associate with these older consoles are what feed next-generation sales. once hdtv goes mainstream, it would be a significant blow to the sony gaming community if it and its games, even if no longer sold, were unable to continue to be enjoyed.

in addition, i think sony wants to be able to assure game & content publishers that they will have a long, healthy relationship with the ps3, especially when asking them to add investment in going high-definition, multithreaded, etc. with their nextgen content.

[Tim Ambler @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"$400.00 doesnt sound unreasonable if..."

that's not at all what this article is saying. they are saying that in all likelihood, the ps3 will be significantly more expensive than $400.

[Jordan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

the price has not been confirmed yet. however if it does come out at $400 i think that is a reasonable price especially w/a blu-ray player. i planed for the ps3 to be my first blu-ray player i hope it does not end up costing like $600 plus or something crazy like that. however i am afriaid that is what sony is thinking afterall sony chief ken kuturagi said

"i'm aware that with all these technologies, the ps3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. i think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to"

i take that as it is going to be expensive as hell at first but, that is why they think they can get a 10 year life cycle out of it.

[Gregory Pierce @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

guys the original playstation is still on the market! when these guys talk about something being on the market, they talk about it still being available at retail.... which the sony playstation is some 11 years after it launched in 1994.

[Chris McDowell @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

you cant get a ten year lifecicle out of that. the most highend technology becomes sub par in a year if your looking for that cutting edge kind of technology which is what lots of gamers are looking for. i know everyone says that they dont care about graphics and hardware power but that power gives you alot of ability to be inovative. such as physics better ai and more massive environments. they dont have to use that power to increase polygon counts always but they can use it to have massive armies of ai and living cities that are true to life sizes. the graphics are also what sells games mainly in the begining otherwise why does everyone look at the screenshots and comment on how good they look.

[Jake @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i think kuturagi could be exaggerating the whole expensive aspect of the console on purpose. if he keeps saying, "it's going to be expensive, so get ready," then launching the thing at any sub-$400 price level would seem cheap. maybe it's just mind tricks. make us think it'll be crazy expensive, and then undercut whatever price we have in our minds.

[ken fager @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

ahhhh... i remember when sega saturn first debuted at toys r us for $399.99.

[Shade @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

sony has scheduled a wake-up call for itself with this new playstation.

as said before, sony has gotten incredibly arrogant. a $400 price tag will not allow them to remain competitive with ms and nintendo.

[Tyler Puckett @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

the wal-mart here in town still sells the redesigned psone and the classic games for it like grand theft auto, gt racing, crash bandicoot, etc. the console i believe is $29 or something like that, with the games $5-10.

[dookie559 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

the playstation 1 lifespan was over ten years.
the playstation 2 is coming close to a ten year lifespan.

[KC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i agree with #1 that kutaragi is being really arrogant. he aslo is quoted saying something along the lines of that people will want to work more just to aford one of these systems. it just seems redic to spend $400 or more on a videogame console, especially every 5 years. but $400 or $500 over 10 years seems like good economics, but if the system tanks in its first year whats to say for the next 9. sony and nintendo are both making games consoles more (or in nintendo's case less) than they really need to be. a system doesnt need two hdmi outputs, a 9 core processor, or 3 gigabit ethernet ports. what the ps3 doest need is a hard drive and not the prementioned features, as all of them cause the system price to skyrocket. the ps3 is overkill, the revolution is underkill, and the 360 is almost the perfect fit. (by no way am i ms fanboy either, i hate using windows and have had almost every nintendo console)

personally i wont be buying any system until i see which of them goes the way of the cube and dreamcast

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

10 years ?

well afer investing so much (on all development fronts...r&d...image/marketing...partnerships/licensing agreements...offerings to the goods of fortune...etc...) sony may have to make it last 10 years, but i don't know if it's a good idea.

first, ideally, your hardware purchase *should* last the generation and maybe a little beyond. i know, i know, when things went optical and consoles started having a lot more moving parts the likelyhood of this actually happening decreased, but 10 years ? i doubt all but the most immaculately cared for units will die before the next generation sony console...particularly considering how many complaint's i've heard from people about sony hardware in general of late, and ps2 hardware in particular (individual results will of course vary).

but, i guess i should be fair and say i defy any other console maker to mass produce a unit that will last 10 years of average to heavy use (i doubt anyone could do it cost effectively).

i suppose this problem could be mitigated if, in typical japanese fashion, the ps3 has a primarily static design but continues to have minor upgrades and add-ons every 2 years or so. this coupled with the usual slow decline of the unit cost means that the value continues to be there even if you have to buy 2 - 3 consoles during the tenure of the generation as you are paying less and getting more with each successive purchase.

but with an initial cost of $400+ hitting the sweet spot of that model will be tough. of course, with a 10 year life span, basically all the teenagers who have ps3 purchased for them during the first 5 years will start making their own money during the second 5 years, so to them it will only seem as if they are purchasing 1 console...and at the lower price too...

but then there's the competition to consider.

if you go xbox style, that's almost enough time for 3 generations. 3 chances for ms to blow the ever aging ps3 away. 3 chances for nintendo to innovate sony into deep trouble. three chances for sega to rise like a phoenix and return to it's 'genesis' glory (ok...that probably won't happen, but a guy can dream(cast), right ?)

as we saw with the 'emotion engine' (and to a slight degree the ill fated sega saturn as well) the complexity of these later systems means that as the developers become more skilled with the platform, it seems to get better and better over time though the hardware remains the same.

but again, 10 years ? sony better make it last...

it should be interesting to see. and to discuss when the next-next genreation rolls around since i'll be 35 by that time and might be discussing this with my kids (which i don't even have yet)...

[VVV @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

hey 400$ doesn't seem so bad, i'd buy it

[josh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

dookie, uhhh what? the ps2 was launched in 2000! that is five years, not close to ten.

[PeteC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

good, the playstation 3 will have a lifecycle of 10 years. problem is the blue ray drive will probably crap out in the same way playstation cd-rom drives did and playstation 2 dvd drives have. that way you'll have a ps3 with a 10 year lifecycle and 1.2 year lifespan forcing you to buy at least a couple in that time. cynical? probably! correct? i hope not!

if it lasts and is $500 bucks, maybe it won't seem so bad but if you have to pay $500, then $350 for the next one then $200 for some second hand one as you really can't afford to buy a third new ps3.

[xjester @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

10 years is a nice thought, but i think technological advances and consumer expectations will dictate the lifecycle of your console, not the manufacturer themselves.

now, with that said, if you look at the infrastructure of the ps3, it could take developers at least 2 years just to figure out how to get 50% of the power out of this thing. just based on pure computing horsepower, the ps3 is mindboggling. it also incorparates multiple processors. 8 to be exact. no one has ever coded to that. not anyone that counts, anyway. either way, there is tons of power locked away in the ps3, but i dont know if there is enough to last 10 years.

its quite unrealistic to think that technology will not change enough to warrant a hardware upgrade.

[nerfgun @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

you guys don't get it - all this "10 years and its really expensive" talk is just to screw with microsoft's expectations of how to price the xbox360 competitively.

[brad f. @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

for anyone to say that there is a price too high is not a gamer. gamers will!!! pay anything to get their hands on this machine. just like in the past, anyone who is a junkie buys it in the first 3 months. anyone else who isn't recourceful enough or can't come up with the money simply hasn't prioritized properly!
you know it and i know it, there is no price too high for the playstation3. however the xbox 360 im sure will be over-priced considering they're using existing technology to try and complete with ps3 which uses all completely newly developed technology. what system woiuld u want????? step it up bill gates you moron!!!

[brad f. @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

for anyone to say that there is a price too high is not a gamer. gamers will!!! pay anything to get their hands on this machine. just like in the past, anyone who is a junkie buys it in the first 3 months. anyone else who isn't recourceful enough or can't come up with the money simply hasn't prioritized properly!
you know it and i know it, there is no price too high for the playstation3. however the xbox 360 im sure will be over-priced considering they're using existing technology to try and complete with ps3 which uses all completely newly developed technology. what system woiuld u want????? step it up bill gates you moron!!!

[.mCr. @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

daily ps3 reports are beginning to have a guns n' roses "chinese democracy" feeling to it...

.mcr, who highly doubts it will by next summer.

[Nuno @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

in my country the price of a ps2 is 150 euros , when it was launched it costed almost 500 euros.

these things cost money to build, don�t expect them to be given. if you don�t like the price don�t buy, or just wait until the price goes down (that�s what i�m waiting for the ps2 :x lol).

[Controller @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

wow. that is way to long for my taste.

[Wayne Chiang @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

with upgrades, it may be true...

[The1 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

btw, sony could be playing an old jedi mind trick. thy could make you think the ps3 is going to cost be expensive and realse it for $350 us dollars and people will say - "oh thats not expensive" and buy the console.

[Gorilla @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

in your dream

[Kamalot @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

sounds like sony is betting the farm on the long shot here. with the only profitable division of sony being the games division, creating a 10-year product gives them a lot of time for competition to pass them by.

[Conde @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i think 400 is a reasonable price. a lil expensive, but still reasonable. id keep it for 10 yrs. heck i still have my nes and super nes. and ive never had to fix my ps2. the only reason you had to buy a new ps2 is when you bought it from circut city. but i got mine strait from sony cuz my dad used to work for them.

[Dan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

honestly, can we just keep on with this generation of consoles for another couple of years?

i mean come on, xbox 360, ps3... does anyone honestly give two shits about either?

just back off a bit, see if the hd-dvd thing settles down... let the programmers learn how to work with multiple threads or whatever the fuck... let the tech get to where it's actually halfway impressive / priced to where anyone can actually buy one of the damn things...

i mean come on guys, i'd keep buying games for the ps2. wouldn't you keep buying games for the ps2? i'd be happy to buy games for the ps2.

[t3h_bob @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

within 10 years, microsoft and nintendo will have already made a 6th gen console. if sony really wants to do this, i think they are crazy. crazy. unless they are planning to do "update packages", kind of like the expansion "pak" for the n64 or sumthin, but you cant upgrade the processors. i can just see the pimply little teens trying to line up all the little sockets just to play gta: 7 mexico city.

[josh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

re: dan

no, i don't buy ps2 games now, unless they are "breath of fresh air" games such as katamari damacy. the console has peaked technologically. my favorite game of the last year or so, resident evil 4, could not be done on the ps2 without graphical compromises... i'm for a new gen even if it's not a mind-blowing leap. for example look at screens for the "dead rising" game (a zombie game), it features scenes with hundreds of zombies on screen menacing you... no console today could have 200 zombies on screen at once and not choke.

[Jeff @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

"besides the original game boy platform, no system has ever lasted 10 years in the market."

this is incorrect. the atari vcs/2600 was on sale from 1977 to 1989. the mattel intellivision was on sale from 1979 to 1991. the nintendo famicom lasted even longer - from 1983 to 2002, almost 20 years!

the original playstation had at least *close* to a 10 year run. i'm not sure of the exact dates, but the latest it launched in japan would have been early 1995 and production finally ceased in 2004.

feel free to look all of these dates up.

i don't know about kutaragi's "you won't need another version of the playstation" quote - that just sounds like hype, and can probably be dismissed - but a 10 year lifespan is not at all out of bounds for a successful console. the *average* is around five years - remember, that means some systems have less, some have *more*. and several have lasted longer than 10 years.

are these consoles always going as strongly in year 10 as they are in year one? no, but that's not really the point. the point is they're cheap enough to produce at that point that they continue to be profitable for the manufacturer. if the ps3 is popular enough to start with, there's no real reason why it couldn't follow the same pattern as the ps1.

[epobirs @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

considering the complaints emerging from developers regarding the unprecedented difficulty in producing engines to make good use of the new hardware, it could be a good five years before the software is really getting the full use of these machines. many developers are dependent on middleware companies to create the engines upon which everything they do relies. those engines still have years to go before they really find the right ways to exploit the full capacity of the machines, thus holding up everyone else's work.

multi-processor/core systems are common in the server world and for big operations that lend themselves to being divided into many sub-tasks but those are rarely real-time interactive application where everything must be coordinated with near perfection to advance the state of gaming art. the problem is that multicores processors are an unavoidable path for advancing the hardware. in the pc/mac realm single core processors have largely peaked and multicore is well on its way to becoming the standard. which is fine for an environment like windows/macos/linux where there is always plenty of work available without having to have everything closely coordinated. the game consoles are well behind the pc/server market and could get by for another generation with conventional processors (like an xbox with a 2.5 ghz athlon64) but both microsoft and sony seem to believe it is better to take the dive sooner than later.

it will take a ten year lifespan for the ps3 and xbox 360 to fulfill their promise. they may never get the chance. just as developers are getting a handle on the multi-core engine issue the market will be ripe for new $300 boxes with more horsepower to enter the competition. perhaps nintendo will use such a tatic to get the competition to do the hard work for them while they bide their time with a inexpensive gamecube upgrade that exploits their past systems hits for driving revenue.

[bones @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i dont think its like that. i think that sony will not make another system for 10 year keeping the ps3 as sonys main system. the only other system to do tat was gameboy. it would be longer if it wasent for the color

[Mac @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

to #35. sony will make another console. did you guys hear sony this very thing about the psone, ps2, and psp. they say it about every videogame hardware that they make.

they have done it with the psone. the psone is still reaching some new middle eastern countries for the 1st time ever. the ps2 is half way there.

what is it that you guys don't understand?

[epobirs @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

while it's unlikely sony will go a whole decade with the ps3 as its top of the line model, you can bet they will try to leverage the investment going forward.

most of the succesor consoles have been very different from the same company's previous product. nintendo almost made the snes backward compatible and chose the the 65816 processor for that reason but the economics of cartridge manufacturing and a market flooded with used nes games made that unfavorable. at best, the 65816's compatibility to the very popular 6502 made for a much reduced learning curve for developers. all to often, by the time a company is ready to produce a new console the best choices for cpu supplier has changed. either the cpu's line has become stagnant, as happened with the motorola 68k series or somebody else made a price offer that was too good to pass up. sometimes, like sega with the saturn and dreamcast, the same cpu family would be kept but without the slightest attempt at software compatibility at the end user level.

sony has a massive investment in the cell. if, after five or so years it fails to qualify as the cpu for the eventual ps4 that will mark a horrendous setback for the company and would likely end kutaragi career with the company, not unlike that of the gameboy creator after the virtual boy failure.

so, around 2010 or so, i woudn't be surprised to see a ps4 announed but i'd expect it to have a lot of similarities to the ps3. enough to make it fully backward compatible in hardware. developers will just be starting to really get a handle on using the cell properly (if possible) and keeping them onboard makes preserving their investment in acquiring those skills critical.

the xbox 360, being a somewhat more conventional design, doesn't make microsoft as bound to powerpc. by the time a successor is being planned multicore cpus will be very common and an x86 product may even come under consideration again.

[Yellow Texan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

#32 (josh):

well, technically capcom is planning to port/release resident evil 4 for the ps2. http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/residentevil4/screenindex.html

i'm not a sony/ps fanboy. yes, ps2 is technological inferior compare to the 'cube and the xbox. however, i'm surprised that some recents games' graphics that are exceeding my expectations of ps2's hardware like metal gear solid 3 and onimusha 3. those are games are beautiful of course you could tell some serious framerate issues in some scenes. ;-p just to sum, resident evil 4's 'cube graphics could be reproduce for the ps2 but i'm expecting it will just not be as smooth as the original one.

[Alcaron @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

omg would he please stop talking. seriously, i have nothing against the ps2 or sony but that guy must not be taking his meds anymore.

maybe all this is just really, really, really lost in translation????

[diverguy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

#4 yeah, i know! nintendo's platforms rock, but they aren't the most popular! most people say they suck, but they have some great games... the only reason i would want to get a ps? or x-box would be for some games you can't get on the gamecube.... like halo....

[Andrew Stone @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

all i know is i bought a ps2, got the dreaded "disk read error" and was pissed enough to go for an xbox after selling the ps2 games on ebay... and what do i get for it? an xbox that decided to stop working last week in the afc championship game of my madden season and a whole lot of worry about every buying another console...

[josh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

#38...

every preview of re4 for the ps2 i've read so far highlights how it isn't as polished as the gc version, and that's without seeing any of the really high intensity segments of the game. for example, there are segments where there are dozens of zombies on screen, all interacting with the environment, all with no slow down, all looking great. i doubt the ps2 can pull that off. maybe, but i doubt it... bring on the next gen, i say!

[evilsushi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

first lets get some things straight. ps3 does not have 7 cores, it has one! and several specialized processors for floating point calculations (essentially math coprossesors)

second,i would bet the ps3 is going to cost $500 or more. the reason for this is the blu-ray, cell prossesor, gpu, and last but not least the recent addition of the physix chip.
this is not a cheap set up by any means. i don't however think it will last 10 years as thier flagship game system. maybe as a second tier system.

[Bri @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

the ps3 will cost more than $400!

when they say words to the effect of 'out of reach of most households they don't mean $400. the average household that saves could make that price, i reckon.

i think the 'it's not a games machine it's a supercomputer' is trying to point everyone in the direction of... 'if it's a computer i guess i should expect to pay the price of a computer'.

look at it's stats (way better than psx minus the harddrive). so expect to pay plenty. i think at least $599 if not more.

i'd rather get a 360 and revo.

[NBC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:02AM]

i dont understand why they dont sell cheap at first and let the price stable longer than selling
at high price and then dropping price shortly after...(because if the product flops ? they dont loose much ?)