Sony finally says goodbye to the PS3, production ends this week

It looks like our time with the PlayStation 3 is coming to an end, as this week it was revealed that the console has reached the end of its lifespan, with Sony ceasing production this week. A moment of silence is surely in order as the historic games console gets sent to live on the farm.

The end of life news initially came from a post over on Games Talk, citing the official PS3 Japan page as its source. A notice was placed informing customers that the product had reached its End of Life, meaning Sony has stopped making the console entirely.

The PS3 Slim (500GB), the last incarnation of the PS3 iterations, marks the passing on to videogame console history of the ubiquitous console. Outlasting Sony's original projected 10-year lifecycle, the Playstation 3 has been a commercial success for the company and consolidated the “Playstation” brand while extending Sony's presence well beyond the immediate domain of videogaming. In its list of accolades, you can count the innovative IBM-Sony-Toshiba Cell microprocessor, Blu-Ray disc playback and the mainstreaming of online gaming services on video consoles, through the Playstation Network.

PS3 also lent a hand to some notable trends that we give for granted these days, by supporting streaming services such as Netflix. The Playstation 3 also marked the beginning of a Microsoft-Sony rivalry, where hardcore gamers began carving up the world into Xbox and Playstation camps. According to VGChartz, the console has accrued over 86 million units sold worldwide, rating it as the 6th most sold videogame console in History. Short of its predecessors such as the original Playstation and the Playstation 2, but still nothing to sneeze at.

KitGuru says: Hats off to Playstation 3. Together with Xbox 360, many adults were (then) introduced to videogaming on the ubiquitous gaming console, which has left behind a legacy of online services and hardcore gamers.

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