The PS3 was the console I grew up with. When you look back on its history, it can easily be labelled as the darkest chapter in Sony’s gaming history. It launched at a ridiculous price, was a nightmare to develop for, and took years to justify its existence as a platform. It trailed behind the Xbox 360 for the majority of a generation before finally catching up, showcasing its true potential as creators were finally learning how to make it wor💞k.
While in the moment it appeared as a floundering runner-up, the PS3 left behind a legacy that few would be able to replicate, delivering a library of stunning exclusives and a technological foundation that was years ahead of its time. It pioneered the use of Blu-ray and entertained the idea of turning your console into a multi-faceted media centre long before the arrival of streaming services or the Xbox One. For every fault there sat a silver lining, showing tha🀅t despite all of its evident hubris, that Sony was really onto something.
It has been 15 years since the console’s arrival, and I want to celebrate that anniversary by breaking down everything the PS3 managed to ach🅺ieve and what memories it left behind for me and so many others. Many of the characters and franchises we hold close to our hearts today began life on the platform, establishing the potential of narrative blockbusters that helped form the homogenous selection of exclusives we have today. It arrived alongside an advancement in graphical technology that appr🔯oached photorealism, while still clinging to small reminders of the past and how gaming had yet to truly blossom.
While I was too young to be tuning into E3 press conferences back in 2006 (I was busy spinning Beyblades on the playground) I still recall the infamous ‘$599 US Dollars’ muttered by former Sony Chairman Kaz Hirai, sealing the console’s fate for years to come. The machine was prohibitively expensive and the Xbox 360 was already out and much cheaper, so millions flocked to Microsoft’s machine and left Sony to gather up the few faithful who remained. The PꦐS2 was such a groundbreaking success that the company believed it could charge anything and people would pay for it, and for years this ignorance would be its undoing. After the success of the PS4, the PS5 opted for a higher price point too, allowing the Xbox Series S to undercut it substantially.
I had the Xbox 360 for a number of years before my parents bought me a second-hand PS3 in 2008 for Christmas alongside the likes of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Fallout 3, Genji: Days of Blade, and Resistance: Fall of Man. All of a sudden I had a new console in my bedroom with an avalanche of games to delve into, even if the CRT I was using to play them shocked me everytime I dared to touch the screen. I cringe at these circumstances today, but back then it felt like the future, my PS2 being relegated to the cupboard alongside a selection of dusty Guitar Hero controllers I no longer had a use for. Now this was gaming.
Having grown up with nine siblings, gaming allegiance was a coincidental product of how things were dished out between us. I was the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation girl, while one of my brothers had the Xbox and the third was graced with a GameCube. Our little farmhouse in rural Wales became a gamer’s paradise, and we’d often hop between bedrooms to play certain titles we had an interest in whenever the time was right. My parents weren’t particularly hands-on, they’d just throw toys at us and expect us to fill time however we saw fit. This wasn’t ideal, 𝔍but it also meant I was free to lose myself in media that turned me into the person I am today - and the PS3 was a huge part of that. Unlike the Xbox 360, I had an internet browser where I could watch anime, read fanfiction, and become the gracious weeb I always wanted to be.
I grew up alongside Sony’s troubled console, sinking into it after school and on weekends as future classics like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Demon’s Souls, and Yakuza 3 fell into my lap. I was an anxious, closeted teenager in a massive family, so virtual escapism was essential, and I feel the PS3 provided that more than any other platform at the time. I could play Halo and Forza on the Xbox 360, but the diversity of experiences in 🐠its library compared to Sony was pitiful. It dwindled in sales because Halo 4 and Kinect weren’t nearly enough to sustain audiences in its later years, providing Sony a chance to catch up and kick its teeth in once the eighth generation of consoles rolled around.
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As the years progressed Sony finally got its act together. The chunky original model and Spider-Man font were swapped out for a smaller console that ran faster, looked better, and was so much quieter. The 2011 PSN hack cost the company millions, yet in the years that followed the platform would really come into its own. Games like The Last of Us, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Tokyo Jungle, and Yakuza 5 possessed a variety that remaꦰins unparalleled, and teased a future for the company that has long borne fruit. To be blunt, I’m not a ♌fan of the company’s trajectory in the modern era, but I’d be a fool not to recognise the impact its decisions and attitude towards game design had on the wider industry.
What began as a failed experiment blossomed into one of the greatest consoles ever made with a library and features to justify such a label. My position is very much one of immovable nostalgia, and I’m at peace with that, be✅cause the PS3 was a machine that helped develop me into the person I am today. It was a games console, a music library, a fanfiction reader, an anime viewer, and a reflection of my personality that nothing at the time was. Sure - its user interface is bloated and all of its third-party ports are garbage, but all these years🅠 later I can still happily switch it on and lose myself for hours.
