Shuhei Yoshida prognosticates about the PS3’s next five years

The PlayStation 2 lasted as an active platform five years after Sony launched the PlayStation 3, but the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide, Studios Shuhei Yoshida, isn’t sure how long the PS3 will last after the PS4’s release.

In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Yoshida said that the PS3 will “definitely” be around for the next couple of years because of the price difference between the $200 - $250 PS3 and its next-gen counterpart, the $400 PS4, but he doesn’t know how long that will last.

“We’ll see,” Yoshida said. “There’s still a lot of price difference in terms of the hardware and the games, and PS3 has been doing great — but it’s not like everyone owns a PS3 already. There’s always a group of consumers who come late in the cycle, people who wait for the price to come down. We’re expanding geographically as well. The demand from Latin America, for example, is really, really strong for PS3. So we’ll have a parallel strategy with PS3 and PS4, like we had between PS2 and PS3. PS3 was launched in 2006, in the sixth year of PS2, but PS2 lasted for another five years. I don’t know if PS3 will last another five years — but definitely for the next couple of years, because of the price difference, the great library of games and the publisher side being able to support both.”

He also pointed out that the PS3 will continue to receive new games, that “many indie announcements at GamesCom were for games coming to PS4, PS Vita and PS3” and that some games will be multi-generational.