It’s a wrap, folks. A new find by Gematsu suggests that PlayStation 3 production in Japan has ended. Sony’s Japanese PlayStation website shows that shipments of the 500GB standard model have now ended, it was also the last model that was still being produced in the country.
The PlayStation 3 was first announced in November 2006 and still continues to be updated, meaning that Sony has kept true to a promise it made to support the console for at least 10 years. The device did best in Japan where it was the dominant console, in the West, however, faced stiff competition from Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
To date, 80 million PlayStation 3 units have been sold. The PS4 has sold about 60 million times, which sets it up to take over the sales of PlayStation 3. It’s not clear how long the PS4 will have to take over the PS3, though, if a statement from a few years ago ends up occurring.
In 2013, just after the PS4 launch, EA’s VP stated:
“This console cycle may have gone on a little bit longer than I would have wanted. A five, six-year gap is what I expect going forward.”
Going by that time frame, we should expect to see the PlayStation 5 making an appearance at an upcoming E3 event, either this year or within the next two years.
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