The 10 year plan

[Chemical]

PS3 lasting for 10 years is nothing but wishful thinking by fans and outright lie by Sony.
Exhibit A:
Historically only leading consoles managed to sell even after the new generation consoles were released. PS3 is not a leading console and odds of it becoming the leader are extremely small. Even the most hardcore PS3 fans are predicting that PS3 will not catch up to 360 until next year and Wii is already 10 million consoles ahead of 360.

Exhibit B:
Modern technology changes very quickly, custom build PCs that cost 500-600$ are already more powerful gaming machines than PS3, and in 10 years these same PCs will be a very small fraction of that. So please dont buy into the whole "PS3 is future-proof" argument, nothing in the technology world is future proof.

Exhibit C:
Losses. So far Sony has lost 3 billion dollars in their gaming after PS3 came out. The actual losses on the PS3 are even bigger considering that this includes profits from PS2 and PSP. What is the point of keeping a console on the market that makes little profit? Original Xbox showed that unprofitable merchandise gets axed quickly.

Exhibit D:
Not even PS2 can accomplish this feat.
Ps2 sales:

2001: 16.5M

2002: 21.6M

2003: 19.2M

2004: 16M

2005: 17.8M

2006: 12.4M

2007: 9.7M

At this rate it is very unlike that the PS2 will last until 2011 and it is the best selling console in history.

Exhibit E:
Last but not least, PS2 has the most optimal conditions for selling longer than other consoles. Its successor was significantly more expensive, was unpopular in its first year and lost its backwards compatibility so if one wants to play PS2 games they MUST have a PS2. Considering the success of Wii I doubt that next generation we will see expensive consoles so PS3 will have to compete with a lower priced competitor.