If you were out Black Friday shopping last night and this morning you probably noticed a shortage of the next gen consoles. Xbox Ones seemed to be in short order and PS4s were even more scarce. At the same time you may have noticed that there was an abundance of last gen systems. Both PS3s and Xbox 360s were everywhere, and many were bundled with games and accessories for less than $200.
Before forking out the dough to add one of the previous generation systems to your entertainment cabinet you may have wondered how long the manufacturers were going to support them. While there was no official word from Microsoft, and the first generation Xbox system didn’t fare as long as the PS2, Sony users should be in luck.
While hardcore gamers already know that the PS2 was supported well into the life cycle of the PS3, Sony’s Vice President of Product Marketing, John Koller confirmed to polygon.com that Sony would continue to support the Playstation 3 as long s tird party developers continued to push fresh titles for it.
“The PS3 support plan is very similar to what we did with PlayStation 2, in that we think that consoles have long lives, and as long as content keeps coming to the system, then we’ll continue to support it,” Koller told polygon.com. “It’s the fuel in the engine. And there’s a good bit of content that’s coming to the PS3 still.”
To put that into perspective, Electronic Arts continued to push their Madden franchise to the Playstation 2 up through Madden ’12 which was five years after the release of the Playstation 3.
Koller said that their first party content, coming from World Wide Studios, would continue to support PS3 but PS4 was their priority. Grand Turismo 6 is coming to PlayStation 3 next month but Koller wouldn’t expand beyond that.
This is all great news for Playstation 3 users who are waiting to take the plunge.
What may shift this is the fact that Playstation 3 didn’t ramp up as fast as the Xbox 360 did, however this time around the PS4 seems to have more thunder than it’s next generation competitor.
In the end it’s all going to depend on the developers release slate for both systems. The system with more games will ultimately prevail.
