While the company has yet to make any actual announcements, we all know that Sony's next PlayStation home console is in the works. Surely the PlayStation 3's days are numbered with the coming of the next big thing, right? Not necessarily. Over at GameSpot, PlayStation Vice President of Hardware Marketing John Koller explains that the company plans to keep PS3 support coming through at least 2015 and is looking to turn the current flagship PlayStation into next generation's PlayStation 2.
We're going to continue supporting the PS3 for the next few years. Absolutely. And we're going to continue supporting it not only that long, but as long as there is a development spigot that's running hot. And I can tell you right now, the development spigot for PS3 is very hot. A lot of great games coming. Same thing with PS2…it's kind of stuck around as that old warrior, many years after its launch. But there's still games launching for it.
While I'm happy to see the PS3 stick around for as long as possible, there is a key difference between the PS2's afterlife and the PS3's eventual retirement. Sony could walk away from the PS2 right now and little would change, but if Sony ever turns off PlayStation Network support for the PS3, so many key services and functions would become inoperable. PlayStation Store downloads, online multiplayer modes, content streaming services, and so much more would cease to be on the PS3 platform. While the connected age greatly expands the scope of what consoles can do and we're all better off with options like Netflix integration, turning off that connectivity as part of a planned obsolescence plan severely hampers what one can do. It's going to be a sad day when I turn on my PS3 and am greeted with a permanent error message that the console cannot find the PlayStation Network.
