Heck no. Don't you know the world's going to end 12/21/2012?

No not this time not on this gen. they came a bit late and their price is pretty steep. This forces them to change their 10 year plan on the system my prediction is that the 10 year plan will be somewhat 6 years plan instead.

It's possible. Look at PS2. Right now it seems hard to imagine but the PS3 has power to last a while (look at Wii sales with its spec, and you have to figure the next Wii will likely have roughly same spec as PS3) and its ability to serve as a second BR player is going to actually become more relevant in another 2 to 3 years.

Right now though they need to sort out a more short term change of fortune to even have a chance at a 10 year lifecycle for PS3

I believe the PS3 will be on sale for that long, however much like PS2 I doubt Sony will be using it as their main console by then, nor will it sell in serious quantities. The price of the PS3 will never drop to the current price of the PS2, simply because it has a hard drive. You can shrink the chips and re-design the powersupplies and circuit boards to PS2 size, however, hard drives have a fairly high base price (relative to current PS2 prices).

Having said that, if a system still sells, even in small numbers, then there is no point in discontinuing it until the cost of supporting it is higher than the profit it brings in. So what if it sells in tiny numbers, if it eeks a profit, and sells enough to retain some shelf space in stores, then let it. Sony needs to recover the most it can from its investment, and given that the PS3 stills sells quite well at $400, it knows there are still consumers that will buy it at that price. Nintendo showed that if you have enough 1st party developers (as Sony does), and you sell the hardware for profit, then you don't need massive market share to get a good return on investment. I'd say Sony last year, after seeing their market miscalculation, started to implement that plan. Sony will try to get the most back from their investment, and come the next console, try again, hopefully with a better understanding of the market.

yes, just look at the PS2! nine years on the market! if the PS2 and PS1 can do it why not the PS3?

I believe sony's plan for the ps3 will be a failure in the end. The high cost and small library of games for the ps3 are what will make it fail.

Sure, there's a lot of growth potential both in terms of technology (SPE related optimisations) and in long term price developments (like slimline technology). The Wii also demonstrates that you don't even require to have the most powerful console on the market and in a couple of years 1080p HDTVs will be the standard and common for a very long time to come, so the PS3 is more than adequately specced to provide full quality 1080p movies and top quality high definition games (unlike the Wii).

Especially storage size will be important for the long run, with 50 GB Blu-Ray discs and being easily upgradeable with industry standard larger harddrives makes the PS3 plenty future proof in this regard as well. Internet wise, the PS3 hardware is also more than capable for providing a 10 year lifespan.

The real question is can Sony or Microsoft make another console with a competitive price look all that much better than the current gen. I don't think the answer will be yes for a long time. No ones' going to introduce a console at $600 ever again. KZ2 just showed that top notch animations/cutting edge effects/lighting can overshadow gains from standard graphical advancements like fill rate, texture size, ect. .

And remember pushing the capabilities further pushes the need to spend more making the game with finer details. 3rd parties will not 'hop on board', I don't think publishers want a next-gen to happen soon and its going to show: this gens going to last a lot longer, unless someone (ms/sony) try's to pull a 'wii' esqe new control scheme on things. Even with the wii it was hard for Nintendo to get meaningful third parties for awhile with a 'risky' console.

10 years sounds plausible at this stage of the game, what we have now is here to stay.

The 10 years plan is a load of bollocks. The ps3 doesn't have anywhere near the consumer support to last that long. The ps2 isn't even 10 years old yet...

People are STILL hanging on to this marketing talk???

NO.

Last place consoles that are still losing money to produce do not last for 10 year spans.

The PS2 may go to 10 years (it's 9 years old now) but that was the #1 console of the 6th generation & also the biggest selling home console of all time (counting all Game Boy lines together including Advance would make the Game Boy biggest of all time period).

Even so, the PS2 is on its way out & this year will probably be its final year to be viable in the market. The PS3 is nowhere near what PS2 accomplished so once again...

NO.

John Lucas