Despite its rocky start, Sony’s Playstation 3 home gaming console has just ended a long,
11-year run and has officially ceased production and shipment in Japan.
If they haven’t already, worldwide shipments will soon end, as well.
Despite its initial pricing issues, the “Yellow Light of Death” controversy, and other early
generational stumbles, the PS3 has officially shipped more than 80 million units.
That’s not quite as impressive as the 144 million units shipped by its predecessor,
the Playstation 2, but still a nice milestone regardless.
The PS3 left an interesting legacy behind.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun.
Today, let’s take a dive down the rabbit hole of Sony’s seventh generation console.
With production having just ended mid-way through 2017, this is the best time to buy
one for yourself before prices start to soar.
And there’s a huge market of Playstation 3 consoles out there, too, given the four
or so iterations released.
The original “Phat PS3” - noted by 4 USB ports, a multi-card reader, and PS2 internals
included for backwards compatibility - is hard to find these days.
It was the most prone to the pervasive “Yellow Light of Death” and other fatal flaws, and
it has a significant collection value given its ability to play both Playstation 1 and
Playstation 2 games from disc.
A similar fat model was later released with just 2 front USB ports but no card reader
or PS2 internals that can still be found for cheap due to the small internal hard drive.
Then you have the PS3 Slim - probably the best of the bunch.
It was much smaller and quieter than the previous models, while shipping with bigger internal
hard drives and being much more reliable.
Finally there’s the “Super Slim” model with a sliding disk tray.
This one is more cheaply made and isn’t as well-liked among users, but can still be
bought sealed for cheap.
Thankfully, upgrading the hard drive on most PS3 models is a breeze and often only involves
removing a single screw.
The Playstation 3 may have very much “lost” the “console war” of the seventh generation
to the Xbox 360, it actually provided a fantastic ecosystem of gameplay that most gamers may
have overlooked.
As with all generations of Playstation, there were quite a few unique exclusive releases
to the PS3: Infamous, God of War, Beyond Two Souls, the Uncharted series, Demon’s Souls
for the truly hardcore among you, Ni No Kuni, Killzone, Resistance, and LittleBigPlanet,
just to name a few.
But the PS3 also opened the door for one of the best playing experiences for two other
generations of games, as well.
My good buddy BBKDragoon particularly loves this aspect of the PS3.
[BBK] “My favorite aspect of the Playstation 3 is the fact that it can play so many games,
not just PS3 games.
Any PS3 can play PS1 games straight from disk or through PSN downloads in full HD with unlimited
memory card space, right there.
The emulation isn’t hardware, but still one of the best ways to play PS1 games to
date.
Plus there’s a wide variety of Playstation 2 download titles available in the PSN store,
as well.
And if you’re lucky enough to still have the original PS3, you can play those from
discs, as well.
The PS1 and PS2 were very important consoles to me, and being able to play all three generations
in one place really means a lot to me.
Oh, and there’s some sick HD Collections on the PS3, too.”
Ah yes, the other kind of backwards compatibility that the PS3 was graced with.
One of the most underrated kinds, too: the “HD Packs” of franchises released exclusively
to the console.
I have some pretty controversial and negative opinions about remasters that we can discuss
in a future video, but I have a huge soft spot for the HD Packs on PS3.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Zone of the Enders, Devil May Cry 1 through 3, the full
God of War saga including ports of the PSP games, and the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD remix
- there are more, these are just the ones I own.
These are all great ports and great ways to play those games today.
Especially for something like Ico, which was pretty limited in resolution on original hardware.
Then when you consider the God of War 3 PS4 remaster in comparison to the full 5-game
pack for PS3 all still running at 1080p 60FPS… kind of a no-brainer.
This method was porting done right, in a way I can appreciate.
Don’t glorify and do crazy re-engine-ing to singular games in a franchize, just port
them over, upscale, and clean up the graphics so they look good today and still play properly.
It was a great scene and collecting these is a very rewarding way to build a library,
too.
The PS3 also launched the new Playstation Plus program and its monthly distribution
of free games for download.
Even today, each month I get to stock up on digital download games for PS4, Vita and the
PS3.
Also, the PS3 got a port of Portal 2 that had local split screen, Steam Account linking
and even gave you the game on both PS3 and PC!
That was pretty unique and innovative at the time.
Yes, some games - especially earlier titles - only output at 720p, but honestly?
I don’t find it super noticeable.
On my normal gaming monitor it looks fine at 720p, and on my HD CRT I limit my PS3 to
720p anyway.
And the console outputs via both analog and digital video feeds, as well as optical audio.
So you can do composite, S-Video, RGB, component or HDMI, as well as SPDIF optical audio all
from the same console, and it’s backwards compatible with the analog video cables from
the PS2 and PS1.
Talk about connectivity options.
The PS3 had a pretty crazy history on the Software front, as well.
Originally designed to be a Home Entertainment PC, not just a game console, the system’s
UI contrasted sharply with that of the Xbox 360.
The XMB menu was actually pretty intuitive to navigate and gave you direct access to
many more settings than its competitor allowed.
The original model’s 4 USB ports and multi-card reader came with support for a mouse and keyboard,
as well as photo and document editing capabilities - which were later removed or hidden away.
Users could create and customize their own themes and play back video files.
Sony’s little box was way ahead of the curb when it came to supporting media playback
and downloadable apps, and even supported HDMI video out and wireless networking in
the console before the Xbox 360.
It was quite an impressive machine.
What was also impressive was the “Condor Cluster” - a massive supercomputer made
from almost 2,000 clustered Playstation 3 consoles running Linux, created by the U.S.
Air Force.
They weren’t the only ones to do this, either.
An “Other OS” option was originally supported on the console, allowing users to install
Linux and other operating system kernels alongside the native Playstation OS to treat the system
as a computer.
But due to the jailbreaking possibilities that resulted of such openness, Sony patched
the consoles with Official Firmware version 3.21 in March 2010 to remove that capability
as they really began cracking down on misuse of their machines.
They then introduced auto-updating, and as of firmware version 3.50 (released in September
of the same year), soft-modding jailbreaking of the console has not been possible ever
since - at least by the masses.
This was particularly crushing to me, as I had just learned about a jailbreaking tool
that ran on USB devices.
This could even run on my TI-84 Plus graphing calculator I was using for high school at
the time.
Having it plugged in and running the program while booting the PS3 bypassed the security
protocols and injected the custom code.
I downloaded the tool at school and was all ready to finally jailbreak my machine - only
to find that the auto-updating capabilities I had excitedly enabled before had already
updated my PS3 to version 3.50 and I’ve not been able to soft-mod it since.
Dark times, dark times, indeed.
I’ve since bought like 5 other PS3s hoping to grab either an original or one with old
enough firmware installed, but to no luck.
There are a few hardware methods to flash and crack the PS3 firmware, but they’re
a bit further out of my comfort zone than I’d like.
That being said, I do have quite a few test subjects, should I ever get brave.
I do have one original fat PS3, but it is dead.
It needs reflowed and then I’d have to find an entirely new screw set for it to piece
it back together - a project for another day.
The PS3 also had the means to connect to Sony’s handheld consoles - the PSP and PS Vita.
This would primarily go on to function as a storage hub for your digital games from
PSN.
It was much easier to to store your collection of digital handheld games on the bigger PS3
hard drive and then transfer via USB than to download over the slow wifi of the handhelds
or keep them on Sony’s ridiculously overpriced memory sticks.
A couple games did use the PSP as a game function, such as a rear-view mirror in some racing
games.
Of course, many gamers grabbed a Playstation handheld for the one killer feature I didn’t
mention: Remote Play.
Yes, you could use a PSP to play anything from your PS3 remotely - music, movies and
games.
Like the Wii U gamepad, but better.
This was a fantastic feature, and one of the few true shows of what Sony can do with proper
hardware integration.
It’s not something I used much, as I actually prefer a full TV to a handheld screen and
avoid handhelds for this very reason, but I know many gamers couldn’t live without
this feature set.
I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the controller.
The almighty Dualshock 3.
Or not, depending on when you got your console.
The Dualshock was THE controller to own in the early 2000s, but the original PS3 releases
didn’t actually ship with vibration motors in its controllers.
Instead, the wireless update to the PS2’s gamepad featured a “Six Axis” motion capability.
This was not widely used and certainly not a fair tradeoff against vibration feedback
for most gamers, so Sony eventually released the Dualshock 3 into the wild, too.
The PS3 controllers were rugged and could take a beating, though Call of Duty’s sprinting
often proved a bit too much for the thumbsticks for some players.
The wireless battery also lasted quite a while longer than the Dualshock 4, which I find
to be just hilarious.
My main complaint about the controllers is that they never really drop in price.
Sony keeps a stock of Dualshock 2, 3 and 4 available, but prices stay pretty high.
I’ve never broken one of my own, so i keep quite the stock of my own.
All-in-all, the PS3 is one of my more favorite consoles over the years.
I started the previous generation with an Xbox 360 because I was obsessed with Halo
at the time, but I quickly grabbed a PS3 slim as soon as I could.
The library is massive, the introduction of PSN download games expanded that even further,
and the HD packs and backwards compatibility put the final icing on the cake, so to speak.
I still fire up the PS3 and have a blast with it all the time.
If you haven’t checked out what Sony’s third home console has to offer you, I highly
recommend you pick one up before it’s too late.
What memories do you have with your PS3?
Have you even added it to your collection yet?
Comment below and let us know.
Like the video if you liked it, click the link to go check out BBKDragoon and his gaming
content or come follow me on Twitch where I game stream every week or so, and I’ll
see you in the next one.