http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294509,00.html LEIPZIG, Germany — While Sony (SNE) battles with Microsoft (MSFT) over which of their next-generation video game consoles will dominate, its seven-year-old PlayStation 2 still has a lot of life in it. The Japanese company has sold over 100 million of the consoles globally since the 2000 launch. Now PlayStation 2 has come down so much in price that it is cheap enough for people in Western Europe or North America to buy on a whim and affordable for consumers in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, Sony said. Sales are still going strong, with the PlayStation 2 outselling Sony's new flagship PlayStation 3 by a ratio of almost four to one in the second quarter of this year. "We are committing funds for PS2 ... we encourage third parties to continue development for PS2. If they bring a PS3 version out, they can bring a PS2 version out as well," David Reeves, head of Sony's European games unit, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Leipzig Games Convention on Thursday. "There is a lot of money still. What happened last time with PS1 is that they left a lot of money on the table by making the transition too quickly," he said. Reeves said he expected games development for the PlayStation 2 to continue for three to four years. Other industry executives gave more cautious estimates of two to three years.

Let's resume that:

The PS3 is no more a priority for us, the PS2 should also be in the competition.

Does that mean they loses fates in the PS3 ?

He is trying to prolong the PS2 life to offset the loses on the PS3 so that the gaming division makes profit on it's bottom line. I think he is being very stupid and unrealistic here though. Sony want 3rd parties to port to the PS2 even from the PS3 when Sony are not even doing that themselves. If anyone is to juggernaut the PS2 to continue the push has to come from Sony.

The PS2 will get some RPG's from Atlus which will help, they will get Konami PES which will boost sales in EU and with continued EA sport games the system will carry on but it won't last another 3-4 yrs unless Sony devote resources to ensuring that it does and even then it will be extremely tough.

Sony's resources are not infinite and they need to focus on lowering the price so that the PS2 bandwagon jump on the PS3...

I can always play those ps2 games on my ps3.

It doesn't mean anything except keeping people on the Playstation brand. When they are done with their PS2, they are likely to shop for another system. Right now the game selection isn't great so they are less likely to pick up a PS3.

They could have been like Microsoft and just drop all support for the old system, but it's selling well enough you'd be stupid to ignore it.

Its called supporting your products but i expect and already see people twisting it into anti PS3 fud.

If they pulled a MS and dropped all support i would have never again got any of their products.

The part about me calling it stupid is that Sony can't expect 3rd parties to make PS2 games when they are not really promoting games on the system themselves. They need to release quality games on the console as well to give incentive for others to do the same.

The PS2 will continue to receive games from Namco, Atlus, Konami and EA but Sony will need to provide incentive for others to go there. The advantage of this is that Sony are going to request ports of wii games onto the PS2 to further it's life. That could work well while Sony concentrate on lowering that price for the PS3. I cannot stress enough that the PS3 biggest problem is not the Upcoming gaming lineup, it's the price.

Thats why I dont go nintendo anymore or own any xbox systems. The companies destroy there system and completely give up on any support at all.

Gamecube was dead long before the Wii came around.  I don't think Nintendo had much to do with that.  They even released Twilight Princess on it, in direct competition with its Wii counterpart.

The GameCube and Xbox sold poorly, can you really blame them for wanting to focus on only one console each instead of two?

The PS2 was successful enough to warrant attention even after its successor landed.