Gadgetory

earlier this week Sony discontinued the ps3 in Japan which for all intents and purposes basically means the system is officially dead after having absolutely dominated the sixth generation of consoles with the PlayStation 2 so when he was prepared to try and continue this winning streak and they in veiled the original ps3 now the one they showed here isn't actually the one we got released a year later this model was all silver it had this extremely weird and uncomfortable looking boomerang like controller and featured a whopping six USB ports two HDMI ports and three Ethernet ports what we got instead or a pair of models that were extremely expensive for their time running at five hundred and six hundred dollars that puts the lower end model at a full hundred bucks more than with the 360 was asking for with their highest end now both these systems had a lot of things in common they both had four USB ports both of them offered of complete Hardware backwards compatibility with ps2 but there were a few very important key differences between them the more expensive model offered a 60 gigabyte hard drive built-in Wi-Fi a card reader and had chrome trim while the cheaper model only at a 20 gigabyte hard drive lacked those additional features and was completely all-black now if you take a cursory glance to the history of the ps3 you might think there's only three different models the original fat ones the Slim's and the super Slim's but really there's a lot more than that because the original fat model had a lot of different generations after the first two that came out at launch a year later they released another model that was pretty close to being the same as the 60 gig except it offered an 80 gig hard drive and removed the hardware backwards compatibility in favor of software what this means is basically it still plays ps2 games but some select titles wouldn't entirely work right and some of which were completely unplayable a year after this one they didn't even more trim down system that only had two USB ports ditched backwards compatibility entirely and came out in a couple of their hard drive sizes like 40 and 120 and eventually started shipping with the new dual shock 3 controller which had a vibration function now while this one did trim down a lot of features in some ways it was actually the best one because it was much more power efficient a lot quieter and didn't have nearly as many model faults involving the yellow light of death now the reason for all these different models early on is because the early years of the ps3's lifecycle were not very kind to it it had a lot of issues first off it was very very expensive compared to the other systems at a time and it was a full year behind them the 316 that we were both already up for a year and were big successes for different reasons the 360 was embracing the online multiplayer community adding things like achievements and gamer profiles while the Wii was a huge hit with families the ps3 didn't excel at either of these things what it did have going for it is there was actually the most powerful system of its generation being the only one to embrace blu-ray and made use of a very powerful cell processor which was actually also kind of a downside because it presented a challenge for third-party companies to develop for it as a result the ps3 lost a lot of third-party support oftentimes games would come out late on the ps3 compared to the 360 and even when a game was made multi-platform both systems what often times run smoother on 360 despite the ps3 being the stronger system on the flip side what do you exclusive games the ps3 had were absolutely stunningly beautiful with big hits like Metal Gear Solid for the original Uncharted resistance fall of man and near the end of its lifecycle the big fan cult hit Demon Souls the precursor to Dark Souls now as you might imagine after the wild success that was the ps2 a lot of people built up a ton of hype for whatever Sony was doing next especially after already having a year with their competition and what they got for those first three years left a really bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and there was a ton of hate for the ps3 early on and Sony really really needed to rebrand their image hard which they started to do in 2009 with the release of the ps3 slim now this model continued the downsizing that was seen in the last original model it still only had two USB ports no ps2 backwards compatibility whatsoever and dropped even more functions like supporting Linux OS in exchange though the system was much much more power efficient a lot more quiet and with a slimmer lighter much better-looking build in fact I really think the slim model ps3 is by far the best-looking one this alone was a step in the right direction but would really help change Sony's image was alongside of this we also finally got to see a lot of really awesome exclusive games on the ps3 that made people want to switch over including awesome sequels to some of their biggest franchises like God of War 3 and uncharted 2 as well as brand-new ideas that were really successful like infamous I didn't mention spider-man font I could just do a really quick it anything like not to mention it thankfully got rid of the spider-man font now near the end of its lifecycle the ps3 did receive one more model change and that was the super slim internally this was pretty much the same thing as the slim same power draw same number of ports same benefits and strengths the big change though was the exterior it was a little smaller it was much lighter and most importantly noticeably cheaper well the slim wasn't approached to try and make the system the best it could be but also trimmed down the super slim was trying to trim down the system as much as possible to make it as cheap as possible to produce so people could buy at any low price near the end of lifecycle in preparation for the ps4 is impending launch in 2013 now the way they did this is the exterior is noticeably kind of a cheaper plastic it just doesn't look as good and instead of having a self-loading Drive instead had a sliding top with a top loading disk which made it much cheaper to produce during the end of this lifetime you still saw a lot of good games come out on the ps3 we got a ton of JRPGs just flooding it at the last second we got one of the best games on ps3 The Last of Us and it was at this time that Sony also discovered the glory that is HD remasters all of this together led to what was in all Asti an incredible comeback for the system what went from being one of the most reviled consoles of its generation became a huge success that equaled out with the 360 by the end of its lifecycle both of them had basically the same worldwide sales the 360 won in North America but the ps3 beat it out in Europe and in Japan especially considering the fact that it had a year left to do this it was pretty awesome