Archive: 16 posts

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I've been waiting for proper confirmation since 'distribution' was cancelled in Japan. But now we have the full story and PS2 manufacturing has ended. Long live the king of the consoles: PlayStation 2 manufacture ends after 12 years It was the console that defined an era ? but now Sony's PlayStation 2 has finally reached game over. The company has confirmed to the Guardian that after 12 years and 150m units sold worldwide, making it the most successful home games machine of all time, all PS2 production has ended worldwide. Launched in 2000, the successor to the original PlayStation ended up with a library of more than 10,000 games titles by 2011, with 1.52bn individual games sold since launch. "At the height of the PlayStation 2's success, the word effectively came to mean video games for a lot of people," said Anna Marsh, a game designer who worked on Tomb Raider and Hitman. Its success was down to three factors: cunning design, excellent games and great timing. Sony's decision to include a DVD player meant the machine found its way into living rooms, exposing many more to gaming. It trounced its underpowered rivals, the Nintendo GameCube and Sega Dreamcast, and became the exclusive home of must-have games such as Grand Theft Auto III, Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid ? dominating an era in which developers were changing the rules of game design, crafting ambitious cinematic experiences and vast open-world adventures. Piers Harding-Rolls, a senior analyst at IHS Screen Digest, said: "Sony also had a hugely successful marketing strategy, especially its association with football, which saw it gain great penetration in many territories where console gaming was underdeveloped. The PS2 went beyond the first PlayStation by expanding its audience in its later years, introducing lifestyle and social games that helped drive adoption in the mid-2000s." But the consumer technology market has changed dramatically since the PS2's glory days. "Game consoles used to be the only boxes you owned with any sizzle or personality," says Tom Bramwell, editor of the games site Eurogamer. "Nowadays smartphones, tablets, PCs and smart TVs all have amazing industrial design, features and content, and it's much harder to stand out if everyone else looks cool as well." Sony is struggling with its latest handheld device, the PS Vita, which has only sold 4m units in 10 months, while the iPhone, iPad and Android devices sold more than 200m in 2012. Consumers are now used to downloading cheap games on smartphones ? hence the incredible success of titles such as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. "The industry has become so fractured, I'm not sure we'll see another console that gets that sort of penetration into the public consciousness," said Marsh. That means problems for the home console market. The PlayStation 3, launched in 2006, has never matched its predecessor's success, so far selling about 70m units. It was ruinously expensive to develop, featuring both a proprietary central processor and a blue laser for its Blu-ray drive ? a technology that was still being finalised and tested. Released a year after Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's console has never caught up with its main rival, despite some strong games and a free multiplayer online service. Microsoft is also expected to announce a new console this summer, and industry rumours suggest both will resemble state-of-the-art PCs, with off-the-shelf processors and graphics chipsets from companies such as AMD, Intel and Nvidia, rather than expensive, purpose-built hardware. Developers suggest that the PS4 uses chipmaker AMD's "Accelerated Processing Units", which combine quad-core CPUs and graphics processors into one chip for smoother performance. With between 4GB and 16GB of RAM ? more than many home PCs ? also expected, it could run HD-quality graphics at a colossal 60 frames per second. "Sony is right to make the PlayStation 4 with off-the-shelf parts," says Matt Martin of the gaming news site Gamesindustry.Biz. "The company really doesn't have the money to manufacture a new home console, let alone create bespoke technology for it as it did with the PlayStation 3. The entire Sony Corporation [bonds] has been downgraded to junk status by Fitch." Some think the PS4 and Xbox 720 will be the last console generation, with machines designed as customisable units. "I envisage them as scalable off-the-peg PC hardware," said Tim Clark, editorial director at Future Publishing and an ex-editor of the Official PlayStation Magazine. "You will be able to upgrade them very easily with plug-and-play graphics cards, CPUs and so on, but you would have the simple interface of traditional consoles. Certainly the idea of console cycles that last seven years seems like a busted flush now." Whatever the design philosophy, with increased competition from smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and digital download services such as Steam, it is unlikely the industry will ever manufacture a 150m seller again. The production line has stopped, not just on PlayStation 2, but on an idea of what games machines are. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/04/playstation-2-manufacture-ends-years

2013-01-05 00:33:00 Author: GribbleGrunger Posts: 3910

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It's a shame that it died now. Everything haves to end... Also Sony did caught up with it's rival. PS3- 70.2 m Xbox360-70 m You have to admit, pretty impresive I have to say and Xbox360 had a head start.

2013-01-06 04:04:00 Author: Sunbunny23 Posts: 995

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Sounds like a long and interesting story. To all of those who like to play PS2 games again, you can do it, but if you lose your PS2, then it won't happen again, and here's why: 1. Playstation2 has finally been discontinued. 2. Playstation3 isn't backwards compatible. 3. Not all PS2 games will be remade into the PS3.

2013-01-06 04:15:00 Author: Apple2012 Posts: 1408

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Sounds like a long and interesting story. To all of those who like to play PS2 games again, you can do it, but if you lose your PS2, then it won't happen again, and here's why: 1. Playstation2 has finally been discontinued. 2. Playstation3 isn't backwards compatible. 3. Not all PS2 games will be remade into the PS3. Or you could still play them by buying a used one.

2013-01-06 04:39:00 Author: amoney1999 Posts: 1202

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Or you could still play them by buying a used one. Absolutely right, but I have no interest into buying used objects, because they may be in bad condition.

2013-01-06 04:58:00 Author: Apple2012 Posts: 1408

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Absolutely right, but I have no interest into buying used objects, because they may be in bad condition. Same here. I always buy my crap new, so there's no chance of having a game being all scratched up.

2013-01-06 05:02:00 Author: TheUltraDeino Posts: 1274

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It's a shame that it died now. Everything haves to end... Also Sony did caught up with it's rival. PS3- 70.2 m Xbox360-70 m You have to admit, pretty impresive I have to say and Xbox360 had a head start. You are looking at shipped numbers there. The Ps3 will catch up this year for certain, but it currently sits at 1.8 million behind. For the next ten months it will outsell the 360 and with many more exclusives than Microsoft. With the standalone 12GB PS3 now released (and probably due in America soon) and the fact that the 360 is closer to saturation pint in America than the PS3, I'd say they would be even by around November. Of course, dropping the PS2 will also help both the Vita and the PS3

2013-01-06 09:59:00 Author: GribbleGrunger Posts: 3910

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If you have a capable PC you can use it as a substitute for the PS2 hardware.

2013-01-06 10:11:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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PS2 had some incredible games but it's understandable that Sony want to stop making them in order to start production for PS4, I imagine that would be the most cost effective way of doing things.

2013-01-06 11:12:00 Author: LieutenantFatman Posts: 465

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Maybe Sony might make the new PS3 models have the ability to play PS2 games like the first models. I hope they do that.

2013-01-07 02:33:00 Author: amoney1999 Posts: 1202

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Id also like that but it seems unlikely. Not only would they jack up the price on ps3 again, but there would be less incentive for hd rereleases of those games. More money for the industry is reselling the same game at new price. Goodbye ps2. So many good games.

2013-01-07 03:06:00 Author: xxMATEOSxx Posts: 1787

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It's called an emulator.

2013-01-07 03:48:00 Author: Bremnen Posts: 1800

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The problem with bringing PS2 games to PS3 had to do with the architecture of the PS3's Cell technology. Early PS3s contained tech for two different consoles -- the PS2 and PS3, crammed together into one console. Sony then cut the PS2 tech out for subsequent PS3s to make them cheaper. They have been extremely slow bringing PS2 games to Playstation Store because those versions of the games must be adapted to work with the PS3's Cell technology. The games are not emulated, they are built to work for PS3. Only now, with the Playstation Store coming into its own and the PS2 coming off the market, is there incentive to adapt them. Happily now, with the PS4 such adaptations are unnecessary. The PS4 ditches the PS3's Cell technology and embraces industry standards. This means that the PS4 will emulate PS2 games very easily -- although Sony will deliberately handicap the PS4 so you can't play PS2 games unless you buy them from the Playstation Store. But now, bringing PS2 games to the Store will be easy. This is all good strategy for Sony. They have been trying to stymie losses from the used game market for a while and have everything to gain now that the PS2 is no longer a sold console. They can upload a massive library of PS2 games to the Playstation Store and those games should work readily on the computer-like PS4 -- but not the PS3. PS3 games, as well, will not work on the PS4 because they are Cell technology games and the PS4 doesn't support Cell technology. New era, new compatibility issues. I'm not at all worried that we'll "lose" access to PS2 games. We won't. To me, the bigger problem is that nothing we've bought with our PSN accounts on PS3 will transfer over when we try to migrate our profiles to PS4, apart from superficial things like trophies, avatars and backgrounds. Of all Sony products since the 1990s, the PS3 is the only one with truly bizarre technology, THAT's a problem. I fear PS3 exclusives are destined to become the oddball ones that don't work with future consoles.

2013-01-07 07:01:00 Author: Unknown User

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To me, the bigger problem is that nothing we've bought with our PSN accounts on PS3 will transfer over when we try to migrate our profiles to PS4, apart from superficial things like trophies, avatars and backgrounds. Of all Sony products since the 1990s, the PS3 is the only one with truly bizarre technology, THAT's a problem. I fear PS3 exclusives are destined to become the oddball ones that don't work with future consoles. We may get BC with streaming or some digital versions having ports farmed out to external studios if its considered financially viable. And sony products are always incoroprating bizzare technology not just the PS3.

2013-01-07 16:24:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Kinda sad how things have to move on, but it's for the greater good. And there's tons of them out there anyway, half the gamers I know are desperate to sell their ps2 in order to afford newer consoles. I find it.. Unsettling ._. Anyway, I bid you farewell newborn ps2's. May the existing ones live on forever. TBO I thought it had already ended production long time ago, haha.

2013-01-07 18:18:00 Author: >er. Posts: 785

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We may get BC with streaming or some digital versions having ports farmed out to external studios if its considered financially viable. I forgot about streaming! That may be the key. Either way I hope adaptations come faster for PS3 to PS4 than they did for PS2 to PS3. I want to keep buying PS3 games and adding them to my trophy collection for the next several years while also being able to experience the PS4. If I can have it all on the PS4 with a digital account that's ideal. Otherwise I'll put off buying a PS4 until late in its life.

2013-01-08 04:21:00 Author: Unknown User

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