P L AY S TAT ION 3

This was living, just

“IT LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR HOW WE PLAY TODAY. IT PUT THE DIGITAL STORE AT THE HEART OF EVERYTHING.”

As the world played PlayStation 3 late in 2006, we in PAL territories had to sit back, watch, and wait patiently for four months before Sony’s new console came to these shores. It was agony.

In America Sony cut the US launch allocation in half to 200,000, unthinkable at the time. Amid fears the UK release date could even be delayed until September the following year, a source at Sony told OPM, “We’re still committed to a March release for the UK and Europe.” All our sacrifices to the game gods paid off as PS3 was finally released on 23 March 2007 and cost £425. It had one of the largest rosters of games for any console launch.

“I’m delighted because we’re launching with a stronger lineup of first-party titles than we had with the launches of PS1, PS2, and PSP – and about a third of these are PS3exclusive, which is a similar ratio to what we had in the past,” said Phil Harrison, then president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, at the time.

Remember, PS2’s only first-party game at launch was Fantavision; in contrast PS3 had Resistance: Fall Of Man, Motorstorm, and Genji: Days Of The Blade (okay, you can’t win them all). While Insomniac’s shooter caught the headlines, and for many was that mythical ‘killer app’ every console needs, Harrison gave us something different to think about, saying, “A lot of people talked about the ‘killer app’ and actually it’s the killer catalogue that you want. It’s not about having a single title like a Mario or a Sonic on which you rest the entire platform personality. It’s about having a wide catalogue that satisfies a number of different consumer tastes and styles.”

Given the breadth and depth of games in PS4’s day-one line-up, Sony certainly learned from PS3’s release.

NUMBERS GAME

Back in the US gamers were leaving stores with arms full of console and game boxes. Resistance: Fall Of Man took the top spot with 71,000 copies sold on day one, followed by Madden NFL 07 (35,000 copies), and Call Of

Duty 3 (25,000 copies). Over in Japan Ridge Racer 7 took pole position selling 30,000 copies in its first week. Five weeks later the UK-developed Motorstorm topped Japan’s charts.

Here in the UK we sat on our hands and waited. We had four months to grasp how PS3 was going to change gaming. We asked Harrison what the new console would offer, what its ‘GTA III’ moment would be.

He said: “You can see sparks of change in individual games today. On the visual side, there’s full 1080p HD and what that means. You can see the artificial intelligence side of things in F1 and especially Resistance. You can start to see games doing some more interesting and unpredictable things on the physics side – particularly the kind of chaotic experience you get with Motorstorm. You can join those dots together and start to see how game development trends are going to be influenced. It’s understandable why, day one, there isn’t a single game that incorporates everything, but I think that will happen shortly.”

FUTURE-PROOFED

The reality was that PS3 laid the foundation for how we play today. It put the digital store at the heart of everything and encouraged developers to release DLC, expansions, and patches to improve released games.

PS3 put indies in the launch lineup, with Bluepoint Games’ Blast Factor proving an addictive retro shooter. It was a console that had backwards compatibility built in, literally. The 60GB and 20GB launch models had PS2 chips inside the unit, giving you two consoles for the price of one.

Once March arrived we discovered that in our hands PS3 games felt and behaved differently. The Sixaxis was Sony’s next take on rumble, and it meant we could experience game actions through the pad but still have full control over how characters and cars moved. A gimmick? Ah, go on then. While the flawed dragon shooter Lair made full use of Sixaxis, most games forced balance mechanics on us, including Uncharted, which had Nathan Drake, a character able to dance up cliff faces, stumble and fall off of logs under our control.

The other new technology push at the time was for 3D TV – remember that? Nothing says ‘gimmick’ like asking us to sit on our sofa playing in a pair of oversized sunglasses while our friends look on, squinting, their eyes screwed up in disbelief. While some games made the most of the format, it always felt more like a push to sell a TV fad than to truly deliver a new experience to gamers.

FINALLY THREE

PS3 succeeded the incredible PS2, had a burgeoning roster of games at launch, and promised new ways to play, so how could it fail? The price was high, but PS3 still sold 165,000 units during its first weekend, making it the UK’s best-selling console at that moment. In comparison Wii and Xbox 360 sold 105,000 and 70,000 in their first weekends respectively.

PS3’s post-launch performance was less spectacular and saw Xbox 360, with its year-long headstart and lower price, edge PS3 for much of this generation. Eventually PS3’s sales would overtake those of Microsoft’s console, totalling 84 million units, thanks in part to astute price cuts and a succession of must-play first-party games, including the Uncharted and Resistance series, God Of War, and The Last Of Us.

Given the incredible success of PS2 people question why PS3 struggled. In 2018, at the Develop conference, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida labelled PS3’s launch price “horrifying”. The cost was largely due to PS3’s proprietary Cell chip. Developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, it was a visionary design that can still match modern chips for raw power. The problem was, most devs couldn’t get the power from it. The next gen would have to make up some ground.