The Long Climb

Sony's PlayStation 3 revolutionized home entertainment with Blu-ray and bold tech but faced an uphill climb to win gamers' hearts.

After the Wii turned the living room into a bowling alley, Sony arrived with almost the opposite idea: a console built like a luxury machine, packed with expensive technology, and aimed at a high-definition future. The PlayStation 3 was not designed to be modest. It was meant to be the center of the home theater.

Sony launched it in Japan on November eleventh, two thousand six, and in North America on November seventeenth. The American launch came in two versions: a twenty-gigabyte model at four hundred and ninety-nine dollars, and a sixty-gigabyte model at five hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Europe waited until March twenty-third, two thousand seven, after a delay blamed on shortages of Blu-ray parts. There, the sixty-gigabyte model arrived at four hundred and twenty-five pounds in the United Kingdom and five hundred and ninety-nine euros in much of the eurozone.

That price became part of gaming history because of Sony’s E3 presentation in two thousand six. Kaz Hirai’s calm announcement of “five hundred and ninety-nine U.S. dollars” landed hard in a market where the Xbox 360 was already cheaper, and the Wii would soon look almost impulse-buy affordable. The same conference gave the internet more moments to preserve: the “giant enemy crab” in Genji: Days of the Blade, and Hirai’s enthusiastic “Ridge Racer!” during a demonstration of classic PlayStation software for handheld play.

Inside the glossy black shell was the Cell Broadband Engine, developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. It combined a PowerPC-based central core with specialized processing units that could be extremely fast when used well. The catch was the phrase “used well.” Developers who were comfortable with more conventional hardware often found the PlayStation 3 difficult, especially when trying to make multiplatform games match, or outperform, their Xbox 360 versions.

Sony also built in a Blu-ray drive. At first, that pushed up the price, but it gave games far more disc space than DVD and made the machine one of the cheapest Blu-ray movie players under the television. During the format war against Toshiba’s HD DVD, the PlayStation 3 mattered. When Warner Bros. chose Blu-ray exclusively in early two thousand eight, the movie business tipped, and Sony’s console had helped put Blu-ray in millions of homes.

The early machine had unusual traits. Its wireless Sixaxis controller sensed motion, but originally lacked rumble because of Sony’s legal dispute with Immersion; the DualShock 3 restored vibration later. Early North American and Japanese models could play many PlayStation 2 discs using dedicated hardware, but Sony reduced and then removed that compatibility in later revisions to cut costs. The console also allowed users to install Linux through a feature called OtherOS, a rare invitation to treat a living-room console like a small computer.

That openness did not last. In two thousand ten, Sony removed OtherOS from standard PlayStation 3 systems through a firmware update, citing security concerns. The decision angered hobbyists and drew more attention from hackers. Later, groups and individuals including fail0verflow and George Hotz, known online as Geohot, revealed methods that exposed serious weaknesses in the system’s security. Sony sued Hotz in two thousand eleven; the case was settled, but the fight over who truly controlled the hardware became part of the console’s identity.

Then came a larger crisis. In April two thousand eleven, Sony shut down PlayStation Network after an intrusion compromised account information. The service was offline for more than three weeks in many regions. For players used to free online multiplayer on PSN, the outage was a shock; for Sony, it was a public lesson in how central online services had become.

Yet the PlayStation 3 did not fade. Sony cut the price, redesigned the hardware, and released the slimmer PlayStation 3 in two thousand nine at two hundred and ninety-nine dollars in the United States. Marketing shifted from arrogance to recovery with the “It Only Does Everything” campaign. More importantly, Sony’s studios began to show what the machine could do. Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune arrived in two thousand seven, but Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in two thousand nine was the turning point: cinematic, colorful, and technically dazzling. LittleBigPlanet made user-created levels feel friendly rather than intimidating. Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, Demon’s Souls, Heavy Rain, Journey, and Gran Turismo 5 all added reasons to care. In two thousand thirteen, near the end of the generation, The Last of Us gave the console one of its defining works, a tense, carefully acted adventure that felt like a farewell letter to the hardware.

The PlayStation 3 began as a costly bet: too expensive, hard to program, and sometimes too proud for its own good. Over time, Blu-ray became a strength, developers learned the Cell, and Sony rebuilt trust through games. By the end, the PS3 had sold more than eighty-seven million units worldwide, roughly neck and neck with the Xbox 360. It was not the clean victory of the PlayStation 2. It was the black box under the television, playing Blu-rays, running Uncharted, and humming through one more comeback.