I believe that the PS3 will sell for 10+ years because [insert totally irrelevant information here].

Take your pick
* It can play Blu Rays
* It is powerful
* Sony promised
* Its predecessor did

The only reason a console sells for a long time is because it continues to have games that will sell well, and encourage people to buy it, especially when the price drops.

Did power help the Xbox and GC stay on the market longer than the PS2? Or help the Genesis outlast the Snes?
Do you honestly think that Sony can do anything to extend the life. Obviously, they are going to have to bring out a competitor to the Wii U and 720 by Christmas 2013 or they may as well leave the console business. Do you think Sony will continue to release PS3 games, when they could instead be giving people reasons to buy a PS4. Do you really think that third parties will continue to release PS3 games like Guitar Hero, Madden etc in the way they did for the PS2?

The comparison with the PS2 is terrible. The PS2 was cheap (to buy and develop for, by comparison to the PS360), low power, appealed to casual gamers and children, and had incredible 3rd party support. The PS3 is expensive, powerful, has the worst lineup for casual gamers and has decent 3rd party support.

I'm not saying the PS3 won't be out for 10 years, what I am saying is that if the PS3 is to sell for 10 years, it will be because 3rd parties want it to.

I'll take his word on longevity. With steady $50 price drops and some downward pressure on the cost of BR movies I think the PS3 will hit 100m. Sony should be doing movie bundles to remind people of their biggest advantage. Maybe when they show some black ink for 3-4 quarters running they'll ease up on the purse strings. The years after PS4's release could be golden with 2 console revenue streams and a new portable. I don't see the 3 at $100 bucks before final clearance sales though. At $200 and $150 with a solid game and movie library at deep discounts it's gonna move. Sony have an advantage in developing markets not only because they're working on them but streamed and downloadable HD requires a lot of infrastructure that's going to spread slowly out from the population centers in dev areas. You can play a BR movie and SP game anywhere with power. Jmos.

I know, but they'll probably sell crappy numbers in it's 9th and 10th year... like 1 million or less but it could still be sold. Let's say PS4 releases in 2013, that'd be 7 years already and only 3 more to go... the PS3 could still live with PSVita ports for a while until it dies. They could sell 15m PS3s in 2011, 11m in 2012, 7m in 2013, 4m in 2014, 2m in 2015 and 1m in 2016... as long as they don't decide to stop producing PS3s and pull them out of the market before reaching the 10 years they could make it. I don't know if they'll stop making them when they see the low sales (if sales drop like that) and decide it's not worth it anymore.

Who knows =P

Well it's already been almost 5 years, so saying it'll last 5 more years isn't unreasonable. It's got at least a couple more years till the PS4 comes, and it'll last a couple years alongside the PS4 before it dies. Just like the PS2 is doing right now.

Apart from the name, and the name of the manufacturer, name a similarity between PS2 and PS3

All depends if the games keep coming and Sony doesn't cut the life short by releasing a new console too soon. I personally don't see any posibility of PS3 getting over 75 million. Sooner or later people lose interest, and want to move on to new hardware.

You're right, the PS3 is completely different in every way. The product, features, and sales trends exist within a generation where 3rd place in sales is not what it was during the era of the PS2 making a retroactive analysis with last gens selling habits of respective consoles; pointless.

Looking back through history to predict future events does work sometimemes but not in the case of tech. Not here.

Something catastrophic would have to happen for the PS3 to suddenly get dropped by all 3rd parties within the next 5 years. Sure they may shift their focus to the wiiU, 720, and PS4, but you can bet versions of almost all games will have ports to the PS3 and probably 360 for many years to come. It is just the state of the game development industry, especially in Japan.

Actually you're right, there is a pretty big difference between them. Here's one of the bigger differences. PS2 peaked in its 2nd year, PS3 is peaking in its 5th.

http://www.vgchartz.com/hw_annual_summary.php

I'm not sure how you're working things out, are you taking the launch date as the start of the year, as opposed to looking at calendar years?

Anyway, going off calendar years, the PS2 peaked in its 3rd year, and the PS3 peaked in its 5th year and has started the downwards slope

http://www.vgchartz.com/hwtable.php?cons%5B%5D=PS3&reg%5B%5D=Total&start=40552&end=40706

http://www.vgchartz.com/hwtable.php?cons%5B%5D=PS3&reg%5B%5D=Total&start=40188&end=40342

So quibbling aside, this is a much better argument than all others in this thread. However, I still think that it is incorrect. The main reason for this is that it looks at the trends in the way a statistician would, whilst ignoring the real world effects behind them. 

As an example, the 3DS had a mediocre launch lineup, but has an incredible lineup for the last few months of the year. If, on December 25th, 2011, we take a look at 3DS sales compared to other consoles using just analysis of trends, the inescapable conclusion will be that the 3DS 's sales started off bad, but dramatically increased over time. This method of analysis would overestimate the end of life sales of the 3DS, because the effect noted is caused by the release of games.

In order to predict a console's sales, you must predict it's games. The PS3 had shit sales for the first little while because it has few popular games. It took longer for the PS3 to get good games, due to a combination of longer development times, and a bit of disorganisation of 1st parties. This is why the PS3 peaked later. Not because it's 5th year was particularly strong, but because it's 3rd year was particularly weak.

If the PS3 is to last as long as the PS2, it needs the same support from third parties after the start of the next generation that the PS2 enjoyed. I doubt this will happen, because the PS3's userbase is so much lower, and it is much more difficicult to program for than its competition.

it will sell and keep selling, no doubt it would reach 100 million in 4 years.

15 million this year, 20 milllion (post price cut) next year and then 10 million year 3 then 5 million year 4 from now since they will release an console in at least 3-4 years from now.