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Sony Entertainment Games

PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap 100

Posted by Zonk from the mixed-messages dept.
Anonymous PC Gamer writes "CNet is reporting that Sony's Ken Kutaragi has said that he expect the Playstation 3 to have a ten year life cycle. Methinks Sony's production woes are going to be their achillies heel this time, especially in America. Will Sony be able to survive a couple of months of having another expensive, hard-to-find console with Bill and Co. bloodthirsty at their heels?" From the article: "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...But we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we're going to have to do our best (in containing the price)."
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PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap More

PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap

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  • Typo in headline (Score:3, Informative)

    by djfray ( 803421 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:58AM (#13176743) Homepage
    Should be "PS3 to have ten year life span...."
    • Hence the from the mixed-messages dept.

      • Re:Typo in headline (Score:3, Insightful)

        by interiot ( 50685 )
        That's virtually the same as saying "from the we-know-there's-confusion-in-the-writeup-somewhere -but-we're-too-lazy-to-RTFA dept.", isn't it?
    • Probably, but the PS2 might just end up with a 10 year lifespan as well. It first came out in, what, 2000? I tend to wait on next generation consoles until either selection on my current console dries up or there are enough games that really interest me on the next generation consoles. It'll be a while before new PS2 games stop coming out and while I'm sure at least one of the next three consoles will build a library that looks interesting to me, and while I'd guess this will happen around 2007-8, it could
      • It's funny that your whole argument regarding how long the PS2's lifespan will be is based upon your personal considerations in when you plan to stop buying PS2 games and/or move on to a newer console.
        • No, as I didn't get the PS2 at launch. The lifespan of the console is from when it first comes out, not to when the manufacturer releases something else they'd prefer you buy, but until it no longer serves its primary purpose satisfactorily. Just because the manufacturer of whatever microwave oven you own discontinues an old model and puts out a new improved mircowave oven doesn't mean that your perfectly good working microwave oven has reached the end of its lifespan. With entertainment devices, a key cons
          • "I don't intend to buy any more movies on VHS, but VCRs have not quite yet reached the end of their lifespan."
            Again, what do your personal buying habits have to do with the lifespan of a product?
            • Wow, you even quoted it while it whooshed right over your head. Okay. Slowly now.

              Point. There are two primary purposes for a VCR: recording from a video source (such as television) to view later and playing prerecorded video (movies).

              Point. There are superior technologies available for both of these tasks: DVRs for recording and DVD players for watching movies.

              Point. Many people have moved away from VCR technology to these next generation technologies, which might cause some people to believe that the produ

          • There has never been a next generation console release that coincided with the end of game production for the previous generation.

            Sure, the NES and Super NES coexisted for a while, and so did the Super NES and N64, the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, and the PS1 and PS2, but the N64 was already dead when the GameCube came out in North America.

  • he expect the Playstation 3 to have a ten year life cycle.

    Not withstanding that it should be 'expects', is the PS2 supposed to have the 10 year life cycle, or the PS3 as the article title states?!

  • Zonk....!!!!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:03AM (#13176792)
    The DAMN TITLE of your story is completely wrong. No where in the articles linked does it say PS2 will have 10-year life span, which we know is false anyway because the PS3 is being launched next year. Hello, Mcfly???

    • Even if the PS3 is comming out next year, the PS2 isn't going to disappear. In the UK, the PS1 came out in 1995, and the PS2 in 2001. Until last year PSone systems were reasonably easy to find, along with a small trickle of budget titles [gamestation.co.uk], or EA Sport shovelware [amazon.co.uk]. You can still just about find new PS1 stuff, but it's disappearing fast. So the PS1 got about nine / ten years, and I'd imagine the PS2 could do the same really, the popular consoles often have a long tail off. I don't find the idea of the PS2 (or P

      • Yeah it'll be on shelves and there will probably will be more games made for it, but I'm talking, and so is probably Sony, about their big marketing efforts. You think after the PS3 comes out you will see any PS2 commercials? How many PS1 have there been in the last 4 years? It sounds to me like he's trying to justify a high price by saying "Don't worry though, it'll be our last big console for a few years. It will have our full support for a decade."

        Right away in the article it says that the *PS3* will

  • Clarification (Score:5, Informative)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:07AM (#13176835) Homepage
    Slashdot's title and writeup are very confusing. What I got from the article is:
    • PS3 will have a 10-year lifespan (not PS2...)
    • this is because the PS3 will have all the high-def functionality that people might eventually want, but will have them all, up front
    • as a result, some people may not need all of the features of PS3 right away. And it will definitely be expensive, so they may want to delay buying it.
    • but, the PS3 will have tons of features, potentially before other consoles do, so that's the upside
    • What a shame. I was hoping that Nintendo would push the Gamecube to have a long lifecycle, perhaps coexisting with the Revolution. Ergo, I was excited to see that Sony was planning that with the PS2. Except it's really the PS3 and the headline is wrong.

      Slating a 10-year life cycle so early doesn't really guarantee much. If anything, it sounds like hype. "Yes, this console will be so good it won't be obsolete (power-wise) for 10 years". Uh, Sony, breakthroughs are going to happen between now and then, and

      • Re: Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Elranzer ( 851411 )
        Being the Revolution can play Gamecube discs and use their controllers means the Gamecube format can live on. (in fact, the Rev has just faster versions of the same PowerPC and ATI graphics card, so backwards compatibility is not hard at all here). Since the Rev is only supporting up to 480p as far as HDTV/progressive scan goes, and Gamecube games can already support this, it seems the Gamecube format can be a stepping stone to developers learning the Rev format. Developers can still make Gamecube games and
    • Yeah, it sounds like the PS3 will have a 10-year life mainly because it will have been on sale for 5 years before anyone sees value in buying it.
  • We're releasing the PS3 with full HD features from the start so that consumers won't have to buy another version of the console in the future. For the same reason, we're using Blu-ray as the PS3's disc format."

    I don't quite understand how they're expecting the PS3 to last 10 years. Given the current pace the hardware industry is advancing, it's unlikely that the PS3 will be too appealing 7 years from now, let alone 10 years. Not to mention how in 6 years, the technology behind the PS3 will be OLD, they'd

    • Re:PS3 to last 10 years, unlikely (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Imagine using a 486 DX-33 to play computer games on

      That would have been, imo, during the golden age of PC gaming and a hell of a lot better than the bullshit games we have now. Relentless, Doom I & II, System Shock, Ultima Underworlds, Descent, Tie Fighter, Sam & Max, and a shit load of other great games were all 486 games. So yeah, I'll take it. Today's games are bump-mapped high-resolution shiny polished turds. Doom 3 may look nice on today's hardware, but it's no Doom II. What the industr
      • I've been with PC gaming since, well, Sim City sat on a 3 1/4" floppy disk in my old 286.

        And the gameplay today is no better than it was all the way back then. Heck, DooM III in it's entirety had fewer monsters than some levels of DooM2! What about games like Elite? The dramatic storyline of Wing Commander? Freelancer just didn't compare.

        I will say that improved graphics are important! Not as important as decent gameplay, that's what keeps you playing the game and it's what makes you buy the sequel. T
    • Yup, Sony is on crack. IF they expect 10 years with the PS3, and in 5 years MS and Nintendo come out with the Xbox 720 and Nintendo SuperTurbo5000 with 4x the processing power, Sony will be dead int he water unless they have a new console as well. You can compete a generation back only if the competition has a tiny library (Saturn) or if its for a short time while your sonsole is in development.

    • Imagine using a 486 DX-33 to play computer games on, not quite so entertaining is it.

      Just a small nitpick: a 486 DX-33 was not state of the art 10 years ago (middle of 1995), given that the Pentium had already been released. A better comparison would be a 200MHz Pentium Pro (released November 1995), as that was brand new technology, and was significant step up in performance.

      Your point is still valid though. Even a dual P-Pro is not worth considering when compared to hardware from 4 years ago (CPU s

  • Well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Momoru ( 837801 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:13AM (#13176890) Homepage Journal
    PS2 to Have 10 Year Lifecycle, PS3 Not Cheap

    Well ok everyone pointed out the typo in the headline, but it's actually fairly correct...because if the PS3 is as expensive as everyone keeps speculating, my PS2 will certainly have a 10 year lifecycle. :P

  • Not targeted towards households? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DingerX ( 847589 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:20AM (#13176976) Journal
    "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," said Kutaragi to a mostly Japanese crowd. "But we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we're going to have to do our best (in containing the price)."


    So what does this mean? Is sony aiming for businesses that deman premium gaming consoles, or rich bachelors with no life and tons of money?
    • I _really_ wanted a 3DO when they launched. I played it at the local Babbages every time I went in. The graphics were amazing. I never bought one.

      Fast forward to today - $700 console launch means awful flameout and riding on horrible "Army Men" Toy Story spin-off knock off crap.

      Now I _really_ want a PS3... but pattern recognition is a hallmark of intelligence. If the price is high I'll take a pass.

  • Disk read error.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by OK PC ( 857190 )
    So you spend a fortune on this machine, expecting it to last 10 years and after a few years disk read errors rear their ugly head! Great!
  • This is marketing BS.

    Technology, including a game console, will NOT last 10 year, despite the "lifespan" claim.

    Every geek knows this.

    Opinion: They are probably hoping this makes Microsoft look bad for a somewhat short Xbox 1 lifespan.?

    • Re:Oh come on guys! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by apoc06 ( 853263 )
      the xbox has had what... a four year life cycle? MS has stated that they released the first xbox as a simple test of the gaming industry. i think that their significant losses have prompted them to rework their strategy.

      supposedly the first xbox supported HD output up to 1080i. http://hardware.gamespot.com/Microsoft-Xbox-9399-O -4-4 [gamespot.com] thats one of the more highly touted features of their next gen system; its nothing new... i think that they saw the rise of the mod community and the media center capabilities
      • I wouldn't be surprised at all, this is, after all, Microsoft's standard tactic for defeating entrenched opponents. Push up the development cycle speed to the point where your opponent can't afford to release as frequently and as reliably as you.

        The did this to WordPerfect to establish office in it's monopoly position. At one point, new versions of Word were being scheduled every 6-9 months to drain funds out of Corel.

        On the other hand, Sony may well plan for a 10 year life cycle, and they may be smoking
  • Nice link for the hard-to-find - it's from Feb of 2001 - this is 2005 hardly a hard to find console now.

    • He is just pointing out that if the PS3 is as hard to find when it first comes out as the PS2 was in 2001 Sony will have more difficulty because the XBox360 will be breathing on their neck whereas in 2001 there wasn't much competition (would you consider the Dreamcast as competition to the PS2 in 2001?).

  • 10 year thing said before (Score:4, Informative)

    by BinaryOpty ( 736955 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:04PM (#13177340)
    Sony said this already with the PS2 before its release. It's just a marketing scheme to try and get people to accept their over-priced day-one purchase by saying "Hey, this console will still be sold 10 years in the future it will be so popular!" It all stems from the PSOne's popularity: the Playstation was released in 1995 and is still sold in stores, so it has a "10 year lifecycle", especially since the PS3's appearance next year will push the PSOne off of the market. The PS2 was released at the middle point of that 10 years, and the PS3 will be relased in the middle of the PS2's 10 years. The PS2 needs to last until 2010 for its 10 year lifecycle to be true, and the PS3 needs to last until 2016. The whole lifecycle thing is just speculation on Sony's part based on the PS1's sales curve. If Blu-Ray's not accepted or one of a million other things happens, the PS3's lifecycle might be cut short.
  • Methinks Sony's production woes are going to be their achillies heel this time...

    I want to know, because I don't want to run into this guy in an online game on the off chance he'll say "Methinks" again.

    It hurts my brain.

  • really, really, stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @12:45PM (#13177820) Journal
    Trying to plan a console to last ten years is ridiculous. Yes, the rate of change has slowed. No, it hasn't slowed that much.

    How can any company even remotely guess what will be current and popular in ten years? FIVE years is stretching it. The PS2 was released in late 2000, and it was really obsolete by early 2004. You can (obviously) still get games for it here in 2005, but pretty much everything else on the market was consistently better by then.

    If you assume a generation time of 2 years (shorter than the commonly-accepted 18 months, but computers aren't speeding up as quickly anymore), each additional 2 years of lifespan will make the initial console twice as expensive. Microsoft is obviously planning for 5 years, and they're launching at around $300-ish. If Sony wants to last 10, they'd basically have to add two and a half generations' worth more hardware.... they'd probably have to ship at around $1800. And they'd have to guess everything PERFECTLY.

    In other words, Sony is hoping for no unpredictable innovations in the next ten years. Hey, that's a bet I'd put billions on!

    The PS3 is looking rather like the Itanic, er, Itanium. Sony has spent untold billions on development. Their product will do some things a lot better, but it's not as good at general purpose processing. They can't ship anywhere near the same price point. They're trying to predict the future ten years out, and it doesn't look like they can accurately predict their own ability to ship their product. (They're still dropping features, so they're probably not seven months from putting product on shelves). March 2006 is very likely marketing spin to hurt Microsoft.

    Guesses: Sony will ship late (VERY late) and too expensive for the mass market. By the time they get the price to the level that Joe Sixpack will buy their hardware, it will be firmly and permanently in second place. Possibly even in third. It will still be a viable platform, but the XBox will have enormous momentum by then. Sony will never make back what they spent on Cell.

    My really daring prediction: Microsoft will actually make money on their console division.
    • The PS2 was released in late 2000, and it was really obsolete by early 2004.

      Um, what? Obsolete how? What has replaced it? Games still come out for it. There will be games coming out for it for the next 2 to 3 years.

      Besides, when a company says 10 year life cycle, they mean they plan to continue production and support of the console and it's accesories for that long. It doesn't mean they won't have the PS4 out around 2010.

      Everyone twists the facts to say their favorite console will win. We haven't even seen
      • The PS2 was released in late 2000, and it was really obsolete by early 2004.

        Um, what? Obsolete how?

        Obsolete in that it's nowhere near state-of-the-art anymore. That multiplatform developers often have to cut out features and tone down graphics to get their game to work on the PS2.

        Original author certainly didn't mean "obsolete" as in "not useful or enjoyable anymore".
    • Erm... The PS2 seems to be selling an awful lot of games for an "obsolete" system. Have you seen the latest games for the PS2? They look anything BUT obsolete. If anything, the PS2 will have a similar shelf life to the PSOne. I know at least a handful of people that are waiting for the PS3 release to buy a PSTwo.

      As for MS having too much of a lead for Sony to overcome - remember the Dreamcast... I'm not going to predict that the X-Box 360 is going to flame out like the Dreamcast did, but being first to mark
    • Oh, and btw - what in Sony's history would lead you to believe that they'll ship a console late?
  • The hype for the Cell said that if the Cell in your TV, or toaster wasn't being used to it's limits by that device then it would be added to the power of anything that needed it on your network, which sounds like complete rubbish, but it hints that 1+7 cores at 3.2 Ghz might not be the end of the PS3 line - as Cells become ubiquitous, Sony could simply throw more cores in the box, or sell more horsepower in a box as an add-on.

    Maybe we should be looking at this claim of the PS3 having a 10 year life in the s
    • That's rubbish.

      Especially at the current time, networking is not a viable platform to increase processing speed. I guarantee it never will be.

      the only way they could promise this without lying would be to have each of the critical components removable and upgradeable, which we all know is not going to happen. Plus, it's already been shown that Cell is great for floating point math, but not for much else. It's doubtful that the "multiple core" complex people have right now is going to bear greater numbers th
      • Before you 'guarantee'that networking isn't a viable way of increasing processing speed, I suggest you take a look at Apple's Distributed Audio Processing [apple.com] in Logic Audio, which does exactly this with nothing cleverer than 2 Macs and an Ethernet cable.

        Apple has also shipped plenty of single processor Macs with slots for a 2nd CPU, and many servers are similarly upgradeable. Consoles have had mysterious expansion connectors with the system bus exposed on them for generations, just look underneath an N64 for p
        • A couple points. First off, distributed processing is only good for somethings, because network latency can get in the way if you're shuffling a lot of data back and forth. That's why it wouldn't work well for gaming.

          Second, even if you could get it working acceptably, then you run into the issue of the console no longer being a stable platform. Meaning that the developers no longer have a consistent set of hardware to optimize for. And that's half the appeal of consoles. The cell in my PS3 might be able to
    • That's all the PS3 needs is a Sega CD / 32x type add-on to hammer the final nail to its coffin.
  • It's just one of the many reasons they give for the initially high RSP. Some consumers won't overanalyze the marketing meme and believe it to be good reason for a hefty investment, especially parents with nagging kids. Even though 4-5 years down the line a new blackward compatible console will be out.
  • Wasn't the uber-expensive 3DO supposed to have an overly long life cycle, wasn't it so hardware intensive that it was overly expensive. Wasn't it supposed to have all the Hardware that someone would need for the rest of their lives... Where is my 3DO anyway???
  • ...Someone needs to put a stop to the spinsters at Sony Computer Entertainment.

    Am I the only one who sees this as nothing more than a ploy to make the PS3 appear to be more attractive as an "investment?"

    "Invest" in a PS3 because it'll let you play the latest overpriced EA game, watch BluRay movies, manage your finances, even butter your toast! Why buy any other console when this is one is designed to last a DECADE! Only 15 easy payments of $49.95! But wait, call right now and we'll make one payment FOR YOU!
  • Nintendo and their "cheaper" revolution is sounding better each day.
  • So if he's not announcing the price now then when??
  • ...seriously. a ten year lifespan, superpowerful and super expensive. Not every man can have one of these...
  • I think I heard or read somewhere that games for xbox 360 and ps3 will be about $60 (new). I like a good game as much as the next person, but isn't this a bit much? If I pay $60 for a game, it better be a *great* game. I also know development costs have risen significantly for these new systems but it doesn't ensure better quality games. I am definitely starting to feel this round of console wars will be won based on overall price and value. Making an initial $600-$700-$800 investment on a PS3 and a fe
  • Not targetted at households? What are they targetting it at, the barn?

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