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PlayStation (Games) Japan Sony Entertainment Games Hardware Technology

Sony Ships Its Last Ever PlayStation 3 In Japan (engadget.com) 64

After 11 years, Sony has stopped shipping the PlayStation 3 to retailers in Japan. The country stopped production on the 500GB model in December last year, but now a recent update on PlayStation Japan's website suggests that the other lingering units have all been shipped as well. It's only a matter of time before the console stops being produced altogether in other parts of the world. Engadget reports: Selling over 70 million units in just seven years, the PlayStation 3 was certainly a console to be reckoned with. Yet, for all its achievements, the long-surviving gaming machine initially made a name for itself for all the wrong reasons. With Sony riding high on the PlayStation 2's market-leading sales numbers, its successor launched at the eye-watering price of $499 -- and consumers weren't too happy about it. Luckily for Sony, publishers stuck with the pricey console, and exclusive games like Uncharted, Heavy Rain, The Last Of Us and Metal Gear Solid 4 helped to right the course of Sony's initially water-riddled ship. With the sun-setting on the aging console in the East, the news doesn't bode well for the future of the PlayStation 3 across the rest of the world. Sony has previously announced that PS Now will soon move exclusively to PS4 and PC. While few players will be mourning the loss of the pricey service, there are many PS3 owners still benefitting from free games on PlayStation Plus and downloading new content from the PS Store. As Sony slowly begins to start winding the console down, it's unlikely that gamers will be able to continue to use these services for much longer on the aging gaming system.
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Sony Ships Its Last Ever PlayStation 3 In Japan

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Good riddance.

  • by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:04AM (#54516031)

    Other than having an existing PS3 games library, is there any other reason to buy a new PS3 even after the PS4 came out?

    • Re:I dont get it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:27AM (#54516091)

      ther than having an existing PS3 games library, is there any other reason to buy a new PS3 even after the PS4 came out?

      Given the PS4 cannot play PS3 games, yes, you need a PS3 if you want to play a PS3 game. If you don't have a PS3, you need to buy a PS3. And that's either new or used. (The xbone can play some xbox360 games through emulation).

      Or you sign up for Sony's "Playstation Now" service which is restricting access to PS4s and PCs only now and play remotely. But if you have a PS3 game that's not ported to PS4 or on PSNow, well, you need a PS3. And there can be a few of those.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Initially the ps4 didn't support DLNA. Last time my ps3 died, I bought another ps3 even though the ps4 was out because it still didn't support DLNA at that point in time.

      I barely use it for games. I use it for Netflix, Amazon Prime, DLNA off a home file server, DVDs and Blu-rays.

      • by zifn4b ( 1040588 )

        Initially the ps4 didn't support DLNA. Last time my ps3 died, I bought another ps3 even though the ps4 was out because it still didn't support DLNA at that point in time.

        I barely use it for games. I use it for Netflix, Amazon Prime, DLNA off a home file server, DVDs and Blu-rays.

        I had exactly the same experience as you. It looks like Plex is available [www.plex.tv] for PS4 now though!

    • Re:I dont get it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JJJJust ( 908929 ) <JJJJust.gmail@com> on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:30AM (#54516099)
      I've just bought a PS4 and I've noticed that, at least among the titles I want to play, split-screen local multiplayer is no more. Figured one of the shooters I had would have it, nope. Went looking for it in Need for Speed, gone. I currently have no PS4 method where I can cathartically shoot my bf in the face or run him off the road. Couples who stay together apparently don't game together... or they have two TVs and two PS4s.
      • Borderlands: The Handsome Collection gets you 2 shooters + a lot of DLC and it can be played split-screen on PS4, up to 4 players.

        • Borderlands: The Handsome Collection...can be played split-screen on PS4

          Is it only cooperative or does it offer competitive play?

        • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

          --Another vote for Borderlands 2. Been playing it for a couple of years with my wife in splitscreen, still fun. PROTIP: Since the bank vault and Claptrap's locker have limited space, we create secondary characters to use for collecting weapons, artifacts, char-specific mods, and keeping extra in-game cash.

      • Also, on many PS4 games you have to pay extra for online play. PS3 has free online play, except for MOOCs like FFXIV.
      • by Megane ( 129182 )
        In these days of HDMI ports all over the place, maybe game consoles should start to support two screens for "split-screen" play.
      • Or have a Switch. The latest one being the first Nintendo console which in its minimum purchased form was multiplayer.

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      Yes if your budget doesn't stretch to a PS4 and/or if you want to pick up a lot of really decent games for next to nothing. It's also a DVD/bluray player and has various streaming apps. For kids it would be fine.
    • I don't know if I'd buy a new one, but I am certainly not getting rid of the one I have. It's basically my media entertainment center. I use it for these things:

      1. Media streaming: Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, and Youtube, Tunein
      2. Audio player for my vast mp3 collection.
      3. Video player for any H264 files. It's easy to get them onto the PS3 by the means of USB or through the web browser connecting to a home server.

      This really beats the modern "smart TVs" which spy on your web activities and even record your

      • by Megane ( 129182 )
        How long until the media streaming apps stop getting updated? That's probably the worst thing about Netflix-style streaming.
        • I didn't expect them to be updated for long. But then again, it's a surprise that PS3 was being sold until now. There is a whole lot of those consoles out there. I assume the apps will continue being updated.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    As the PS3 becomes "retro", the DRM in PS3 means as consoles die games will be lost forever. In 2040 you'll still be playing Super Mario World, but not The Last of Us.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Actually you should be rejoicing.

      Once Sony finally stops all support for the PS3, something that's much closer and more likely now that they're finally completely running out of stock, the odds of them trying to patch out jailbreaks going forward will be much lower.

      Heck, even if they DID try to patch out future jailbreaks after completely stopping all service for it, nobody's likely going to care since Sony will have precious little incentive to get anyone to patch the console.

      They won't be able to connect

      • PS3 Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @05:14AM (#54516299) Homepage

        Speaking of which, it would be nice if their last patch before ditching the console did re-enable the "other os" option, this time with the hyper visor officially giving access to all resources.

        • Speaking of which, it would be nice if their last patch before ditching the console did re-enable the "other os" option, this time with the hyper visor officially giving access to all resources.

          They won't ever do that. They double-extra won't ever give it to you with a hypervisor which gives access to all resources, but the truth is that Other OS made it too easy to rip Blu-Ray.

          • That and they already payed out millions (in theory anyway) as part of a class action lawsuit for disabling the feature. If they dug in their heels that hard, there's no way they're going to re-enable it.

          • They double-extra won't ever give it to you with a hypervisor which gives access to all resources, but the truth is that Other OS made it too easy to rip Blu-Ray.

            How so ?

            I vaguely understand the logic behind the game piracy scare :
            - apparently some frustrated tinkerer found an unofficial way around the hypervisor limitations, and that would in theory open up way to devise solution to run commercial games under OtherOS without the copy protection kicking in.

            But how would a PS3 running OS help ripping Blurays differently than a USB3 Bluray drive connected to a laptop ?
            Or did you meant "ripping the encryption key out of the player's RAM" ? (something along the way of :

            • PS3's were 'blessed' and under a older firmware could just dd any Blu-ray disc in them, easily creating raw iso files

    • and check out SSF & Yabause. Last I checked they got After Burner Climax [youtube.com] running on it. Which is nice since you can't buy the game anymore when the F-14 Tomcat license ran out (which sucks)
    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      As far as I know every PS3 title can be decrypted and accessed since the root metldr keys (stored in unchangeable firmware) have been obtained which means every piece of the firmware can be decrypted in turn on down to the keys used to decrypt actual game disks (regardless of how old or new those disks are).

      Not sure if Sony released a newer PS3 with new metldr keys but even if they did, just get the firmware update for the PS3 with the old metldr keys and work from that to get the latest keys for decrypting

  • Missing from the overview are the people that bought PS3's as a cheap BluRay player and those that used clusters of PS3's running linux.
  • The summary talks about the PS3's "eye-watering" price, and its gaming legacy. However, it's more important contribution in tech history was the introduction of Blu-ray. Sure, Blu-ray didn't originate with the PS3, but other than a handful of $1000, stand-alone players, the PS3 was the route that Blu-ray took into the living room. For several years, the PS3 was the top-rated Blu-Ray player (in terms of features, speed, ease-of-use, etc.), and cost the same or less than stand-alone players. Some remember
  • Re-enable the "Other OS" boot option and kiss it goodbye.

    Nah, won't happen...

  • You can upgrade the hardware piece by piece as you see fit: Now a hard drive, then a new GPU, later a newer mobo+CPU+RAM, etc.
    Also, so far, it's been much better than the consoles in preserving backwards compatibility. In a modern PC with Windows you can play most games made in the last 10 years, many in the last 20. The rest of them (ok,. I'm sure some you can't) you can run in a VM on the original OS for which they were designed.
    Of course, it has bad things. For me, the biggest one is that you're tied t

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