Description

The Playstation 3 is the third generation of consoles from Japanese console builder Sony. It was presented at an E3 press conference in 2005 and would appear in Japan and the US a year later. The introduction into PAL areas, including Europe, was delayed until 2007 due to a delay in the mass production of one of the components of the blue-ray player.

Blue-ray

It was this blue-ray player that made the console very popular by a large audience. Blue-ray was a brand new technique. Blueray players were often very expensive. The Playstation 3 was cheaper with its built-in blueray player than many other blue-ray players. The fact that you also got a super powerful gaming console, made the Playstion 3 a great buy.

Comparative advantage

Yet the Playstion 3 has not fared as well as its predecessor; the Playstation 2. The reason was threefold. First of all, the Playstation 3 came out a year later than its direct competitor the Xbox 360 and, as mentioned, also an extra year later in the PAL areas. Many gamers already had Microsoft’s console standing besides their television sets . Secondly, the Xbox 360 was a very progressive console when it comes to online multiplayer. After many failed attempts from the Apple Pippin until the original Xbox, the 360 was the first console where online multiplayer worked well. The PS3 also offered this functionality, albeit less intuitively. Third, the PS3 failed to fully deliver on its promise of being the most powerful console. It must be said, the Core processor developed by Sony and IBM was extremely fast, but as in the past with the Sega Saturn, the architecture was extremely complex, making it difficult for developers to use the full potential of the chip.

UI

The menu of the PS3 is based on that of the PSP and the Japanese PSX: the Cross Media Bar, also called XrossMediaBar (XMB). It contains the following icons: users, settings, photos, videos, music, TV, games, network, PlayStation Network and friends. XMB would later also be the basis for the UI of the PS4 and PS5. PS3 as Home Computer There was also an option to install an alternative operating system (such as Linux), which also allowed the PS3 to be used as a kind of home PC. However, that possibility has been removed since the arrival of the Slimline models. Due to software update 3.21 in April 2010, this is no longer possible with other models.

Games

A lot of good games have come out for the PS3. For me personally, the best games for this console were:

-Motorstorm
-Uncharted games
-GTA 5
-Little Big Planet
-Rainbow Six Vegas
-Battlefield: Bad Company
-The Last of Us