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PlayStation 3

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PlayStation 3
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PLAY B3YOND
Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment
Release Date: Original:
JP: November 11, 2006
NA: November 17, 2006
PAL: March 23, 2007
IND: April 27, 2007
KOR: June 16, 2007
BRA: August 11, 2010
PS3 Slim:
NA/EU: September 1, 2009
WW: September 3, 2009
IND: December 1, 2009
PS3 Super Slim:
WW: September 25, 2012
JP: October 4, 2012
IND: January 25, 2013
Predecessor: PlayStation 2
Successor: PlayStation 4
Competitors: Xbox 360
Wii
Generation: Seventh generation


The PlayStation 3 (PS3 for short) is a game console released in 2006 by Sony Computer Entertainment as the successor to the PlayStation 2. It was succeeded by the PlayStation 4 in 2013. It competed with the Xbox 360 and Wii during its lifetime. It was discontinued in New Zealand on September 29, 2015, in PAL regions in March 2016, North America in October 2016, and in Japan on May 29, 2017.

Hardware specifications

  • CPU: 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine with 1 PPE and 8 SPEs
  • Memory: 256 MB XDR DRAM system and 256 MB GDDR3 video
  • Storage:
    • Hard drives: 20 GB, 40 GB, 60 GB, 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB or 500 GB (user-upgradeable up to 1TB readable partition)
    • Internal storage: 12 GB NAND (Super Slim only)
  • Display: 480i, 480p, 576i (PAL), 576p (PAL) 720p, 1080i, 1080p
  • Graphics: 550 MHz Nvidia/SCEI RSX Reality Synthesizer
  • Media: Blu-ray, DVD, CD

Why It Rocks

  1. All models are completely backwards compatible with PlayStation 1 games, and some early models are also compatible with PlayStation 2 games, increasing the library of games dramatically to over 7,000 or 10,000 and thus expanding the number of games that one can play on the console.
  2. Lots of additional features besides gaming, while still focusing on being a gaming device.
  3. Large number of awesome games, such as:
  4. Lots of great games on the PS2 were ported to the PS3 such as:
  5. One of the first major consoles capable of playing Blu-ray discs, which are capable of storing even bigger games and HD movies unlike DVDs that were used on the Xbox 360, and the Wii's proprietary disc format based on DVDs. Not even the Xbox 360's HD DVD Player did well, as Blu-ray already defeated the HD DVD format to begin with. Following a 2010 update, it was the first console to play 3D Blu-ray discs if connected to a 3D TV.
  6. It is practically the ultimate multimedia player. It can play games, has backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games, Blu-ray movies, DVDs, and even CDs (older models also have Super Audio CD support, with the Slim and later models having support for Video CDs, which can be helpful if you live in a territory where VCDs are popular like Southeast Asia), while the other consoles that used discs can't play the same formats, though this is a given since its predecessor was also a multimedia player. It also uses the XrossMediaBar GUI which is very well designed as all you have to do to go to a section is scroll through the menu horizontally without the need of pressing any button to access them. There are also USB slots that allow you to stick USB drives into the console to watch videos and pictures stored in those peripherals.
  7. Doesn't use memory cards like the PS1 and PS2, but instead, you can save on the console itself via a HDD (hard disk drive). It's also SATA, which this means you can fit an SSD in it!
  8. Introduced digital gaming (not the first console to do this though) with the PS Store, which helps in getting games that are harder to find physically, including some PS1 games, PS2 games and also games that were released on older non-PlayStation consoles.
  9. A second "slim" model was also released. It takes less shelf space, is less prone to breaking than the original model, and doesn't use a PC style 3 prong cable (it instead used a round edge 2 prong cable common for modern TVs and the PS2 Slim's power brick). It also costed only $299 which was a great improvement as the price of the original PlayStation 3 models were $499 or $599.
  10. It has the PlayStation Move and PlayStation Eye, a motion controller and motion camera that unlike the Xbox's Kinect, detects your movement well, and unlike the Wii, doesn't fully focus on motion gameplay.
  11. Controllers do not require batteries, instead, they are recharged by plugging them into the console. You can also swap from playing with a wireless and wired controller just by plugging/unplugging the USB port to the console.
  12. It introduced trophies in 2008, an award system that rewards you with an extra platinum trophy for getting all trophies on a game. This was carried over to the PS Vita, PS4, and PS5.
  13. Has some apps like Netflix, Hulu, Facebook (shutdown), Crunchyroll, Funimation, and YouTube.
  14. Unlike on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation Network (which is equivalent to Xbox Live Silver) is free.
  15. The PSN servers are still working on the console, even to this day.
  16. The Air Force made a supercomputer out of 1,760 PS3s making it 50,000 times faster then the average Windows laptop at the time.
  17. It was the only major console of the generation to be completely region free (except for a few select games like Persona 4 Arena) which means that you can play games in any region.
  18. PlayStation 2 controllers can work via a USB adapter, but there are only two USB ports on the Slim and Super Slim models.
  19. The original/fat model has a sleek and stylish exterior.
  20. It's the only console so far that allows the user to play games in stereoscopic 3D. This feature however, requires owning a 3D TV.
  21. The Sixaxis/DualShock 3 has an extremely long battery life, much better than the Xbox 360 controller. Even better, it's rechargable.
  22. Unlike Xbox Live, Sony doesn't ban you from the PlayStation Network for no reason.
  23. The PS4 & PS5 controllers are compatible with the system, so you can play seventh-gen games with these controllers, though the vibration, Sixaxis function, and the PS button to open the XMB won't work.
  24. Like the Xbox 360 (later models from 2007 and after) and Wii U, it features an AV Multi Out port as a secondary/optional audio/video output if the HDMI port is broken or if you want to use the speakers separately from HDMI port. You can connect RCA (Composite), S-Video, RGB (SCART adapters included for PAL versions), component, or the Japan-exclusive D-Terminal cables to TVs with the supported ports.
  25. Unlike the 360, all of its large size games were released on one disc instead of multiple discs like Grand Theft Auto V on the 360, thanks to it using Blu-rays (Blu-rays can hold 25 gigabytes on just one side compared to DVDs, which can only hold 4.7 gigabytes).
  26. Sony still cares about this console after 15 years, recently making an update adding extra security with 2FA. However, it is forced.

Bad Qualities

  1. Most importantly, the PS3 had one of the worst console launches in gaming history and it costed US$499 (20GB models only) and US$599 (60GB models only) at launch with barely any games worth buying, leading to the unfortunate "PS3 has no games" meme for three years and many people calling it a Blu-ray player with a gaming function. This launch also gave a big advantage for its main competition, Xbox 360 in the early days of the seventh generation due its cheaper price and better quality games. Only by the end of 2009, by the time that the Slim model was released, the PS3 had finally caught up and had a fair share of quality exclusives.
    • Some of the older commercials of this console were disturbing and creepy.
    • When the console had first came out, the controller was only Sixaxis because back then, Sony had just lost a lawsuit over the first two DualShock controllers. In 2007, the DualShock 3 controller came out for the console, though a lot of the system's early games never got rumble support. Fortunately, a few games, including Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and MotorStorm, later had it patched back in.
    • The original fat model is prone to hardware failure, resulting in the "Yellow Light of Death", similar to the Xbox 360's "Red Ring of Death". Due to their old age, this issue now plagues nearly all of the launch models.
  2. Only models produced during the system's first year or two support PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility; later original models and all the Slim and Super Slim models lack support for PS2 games due to the removal of the Emotion Engine CPU and Graphics Synthesizer GPU in order to make the PS3 cheaper. Through jailbreaking, it's possible to play PS2 games on the Slim; while some games like Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King and Final Fantasy X run marvelously with very little to no graphical issues, some PS2 games such as Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank do not run well at all, with numerous amounts of these games either outright crashing at the start or having freezing issues and slow downs due to lack of the above.
  3. Most multi-platform games look and run worse on the PS3 due to the unorthodox architecture of the system (e.g Bayonetta and Grand Theft Auto IV), especially with games released during the first few years the console was out. Due to the said architecture, some developers stated that it was hard to develop games for it, even by top-notch developers like Naughty Dog.
  4. Games also had to work on running with the PS3's restrictive split RAM layout (256MB for the CPU and 256MB for the GPU). While it's a miracle large-scale games like The Last of Us and Grand Theft Auto V run so well on the console, some disastrous examples include the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games which lag so badly they become unplayable or completely freeze the console due to running out of memory.
  5. Very few games allowed remote play on the PlayStation Portable.
  6. The fat model has a very annoying power button and disc eject button that doesn't press, but is motion activated. These motion sensors can be quite faulty, often leading to discs either not ejecting at all or ejecting completely at random.
  7. The Blu-ray drive is notorious for being unreliable. Playing the physical versions of some games with very high graphic requirements can cause the lens to work too hard to read the disc, which can make it unable to read PS3 discs or even any DVD or Blu-Ray disc (game, movie, or otherwise). DVD playback isn't so great as well, as fast-forwarding might cause the DVD to scratch.
    • Due to the disc drive speed limitations (Blu-ray 2x speed equals to 9 MB/s compared to the Xbox 360's 12x DVD drive with 16.5 MB/s), most games require a mandatory install before starting up for the first time. Not helped by storage management between the installed games, as well as full size games when you are still required to keep the disc in the console.
      • Even if the game does not require mandatory installs (like Killzone 2 and the Call of Duty games), there is no option to fully install these games.
  8. The original model had the capability of using a PowerPC-based operating system like Linux; however, firmware revision 3.21 removed the "OtherOS" feature, and the feature was never available for the Slim and Super Slim models. This eventually resulted in a class action lawsuit that was initially dismissed, but later overturned and Sony having to settle for several million dollars.
  9. You can't download updates while using your PS3. If a game has an update, you either have to wait for it to be installed or skip it and stay offline.
  10. Due to the discontinuation of the system, Sony doesn't bother updating the PS3's version of the PS Store, making it slow to navigate.
  11. Despite being the first console to include an HDMI port, not a single model came with an HDMI cable, forcing you to get one yourself. While this was probably because of how rare and expensive HDMI cables, along with HDTVs also being expensive at the time, it was just another cost for the user to have to absorb on top of the already-high price of the console. Thankfully, this problem was fixed with all the next-gen PlayStation consoles including HDMI cables with each system sold.
  12. Streaming services on the console now suffer from bugs or no longer function properly in contrast to their Xbox 360 counterparts which are still working great as of 2022. Netflix suffers from 1-2 second input lag while Hulu lags so badly it becomes unusable after several minutes and can crash the PS3.
  13. Because this is an old console from the mid-2000s, it has issues compared to today's standards:
    • The console's web browser is extremely limited and slow, outdated, and it doesn't load most pages properly (due to lack of full HTML5 support). Sometimes other websites like wikis, Capcom ID, or even Sony's official website don't work.

Trivia

  • In April 2011, the PS3's PlayStation Network was hacked. 77 million accounts were compromised and could not log in to the servers. The incident made international headlines and caused outrage among gamers. For more information, read the article here.
  • On March 1, 2010, many PS3 fat models worldwide were affected by an error known as the leap year bug, as they wanted to pass the date from February 28, 2010 to February 29, which is a nonexistent date. This caused not only an outage on the PlayStation Network, but also problems playing offline games.
  • As of September 2020, the PS3 has sold 87.41 million units around the world, and 35 million in Europe, despite starting a year later than the Xbox 360. Although it is Sony's lowest-selling home console, it was still a huge success.

Videos

References


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