Kaz Hirai Wonders Where The GameCube, Xbox Are...

So E3 came and went, and we still don't have a hard and fast date for Home yet. Sure, we've got a "fall" dating for the Home Beta, but still, people have been waiting. And people kinda wish that Sony would hurry it up! According to Kaz Hirai, Sony's trying to make it right so that first time users have a positive Home experience. Fair enough! Says Hirai, "...we don't want to prematurely launch it and then be dinged for having a bad service... this is a platform initiative which means that we need to be extra careful that we've crossed all the 't's and dotted all the 'i's." And hey, Sony is in it for the long haul. No need to rush. Just listen to Hirai chime in about that 10-year-life-cycle and keeping the last hardware generation alive:

And we certainly don't do the consumer the disservice of basically saying that the consoles have gone by the wayside because we have a new one. Right now, a prime example? PS2 is nine years into it. Where's the Xbox? Where's the GameCube? Same thing with the original PlayStation. At some point we looked around and asked what happened to the Saturn? Where's the N64? So if we're doing that, let's compare apples to apples, and for me, because we're on a ten year life cycle, unless we're talking ten years it doesn't really make that much sense to me.

The only way Kaz Hirai tracks time is with decades.

Um, the Xbox and the Gamecube are inside the current gen consoles from your competitors...

Edit: I don't really care about BC, but Kaz should think about how his words can be twisted before speaking.

Why has Sony been pressing the 10-year-lifecycle button again since E3?

The real question is whether or not you have that luxury when you aren't the overwhelming leader in sales.

There are some pretty obvious reasons why the overwhelming winners of the last 2 generations had long lifespans relative to the consoles they stomped into the dust (in terms of sales) and it isn't just because Sony wanted them to.

By 2010 or 2011, the PS3 may actually be making a profit. So Sony is likely to continue with the 10 year plan because they'll need any profits they can from the PS3 to stave off the almost certain losses they will receive from producing their next console. Unless of course Sony decides to sell their next system for a profit, but I don't see it happening.

That being said, I think (as I've said many times) that MS would have been better off leaving Xbox on the market.  Many budget consumers become the regular buyers later, it's like Toyota selling the Tercel years ago just cost to build brand loyalty.

@steven787: MS didn't have a choice... Nvidia didn't want to make more GPUs, and they owned the GPU design. The same won't happen with the 360 since Microsoft learned from that mistake and now owns the whole hardware.

Mwah, at the current pace the PS3 will never really be profitable.

a) Harware is still making a loss. That will be resolved within a year, but still.
b) Sony needs to make its money on the Software, but the userbase is too small to really make money on these massive projects. Sony doesn't have the Square-Enix luxury of going multiplatform. Sure a few games will make money,  but Sony has a lot of studio's that all need to be paid, and quite honestly I don't have a clue what they are doing. Sony needs GT5, but that game is not even on the horizon and will absolutely be the most expensive game ever when it releases. Killzone 2 looks great but is rumored to cost around $60 million. Etc.
c) Sony will go into the next gen for the first time not as the winner. They lost loads of exclusives to Microsoft and they sold very good there so far, so games like GTA and DMC will probably never be Sony exclusive again. Sony can't afford to let Microsoft launch a year early again. PC tech is already past the PS3 and in 2-3 years when Microsoft releases its next console it will be much better than PS3. PS4 needs to be there around that time, or at least the promise of a PS4 to keep the visualcore.

I think Kaz better worry about his own business instead of wondering where Gamecube and Xbox are. 

My Xbox is still in my living room, and I occasionally play titles I missed (it wouldn't be possible to play them all) . I own almost 150 XBOX games. As you can see, I have missed many titles. And I buy them for a few euros via internet.
On the other hand, I can hardly find some extra time to devote to my beloved black brick, since my 360 consumes the majority of it.
So, Kaz, there's your answer...
Would I desire some last gen titles to be still released for my XBOX? Not really.
And destroying the whole BC thing to keep the past console alive? Boy, that's cheap.

If it was Sony who makes the choice of when it stops selling I would agree, but they ultimately defer to the customers.  There are at least as many scenarios where sales have died off by 2011 as their are scenarios where sales are still going.

I know the 10 year plan sounds great from the consumer perspective (and I hope they stick to it), but the reality of low development support, low hardware sales, pressure to innovate from competitors and/or consumers, or even a great new idea itself can all force the decision.  I'm not saying those factors will all be in play in 2011 but even 2 of them is enough and there are a lot of scenarios where 2 of them occur.

@Steven,

There might very well be some merit to that but its hard to say for sure if those sales would justify the cost incurred in supporting it still.  With the PS2 this is clearly worthwhile still, but when they finally stopped the Xbox it was selling around 5k a week worldwide.

Sony and the bloody 10 year plan....