I recently read an article about the PS4 release date that had the title “Hirai suggests PS4 is over ten years away”.

After reading the article, I discovered that he didn’t make any suggestions as to when the PlayStation 4 release date would be, and again it was speculation fanning false flames of curiosity and amazement and taking the comments out of context, so it was a “legitimate suggestion”. “. “.

The original PlayStation (PS1) became the first system to sell more than 100 million copies. However, it didn’t get to this point until AFTER the PS2 came out. In fact, it sold its 100 million copies in March 2005. This was actually 5 years AFTER PS2’s latest release date. The original PlayStation is only now beginning to lose its value, as games are now being made for PS2 and PS3, but not as much for the original. With the PlayStation 1 launching in 1994, and still selling strong in 2005, I’d say users certainly enjoyed a good 10 years. This was what Hirai was suggesting, the PS3 will give you at least 10 years of value. But that certainly doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have to wait 10 years for the next system.

Hirai even followed up when asked if the PS4 definitely wasn’t going to release in 5 years time and clarified his last statement by specifying that all he meant was that Sony makes sure to take care of their customers so that their product is still. good.

But, I digress, I’ll let you develop your own take on the interview.

The full interview is hard to find on C-Net News.

Here are some excerpts.

Hirai: E3 has a history of 10 or 11 years, if I’m not mistaken. I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s become such a massive show that we needed to take a look at what we were trying to accomplish with the show.

Hirai: …We see that our products have a life cycle of 10 years, that we have arrived with PlayStation. So the PlayStation 3 is going to be a console that’s going to be with you again for 10 years. We’re not going to ask consumers to suddenly buy another PlayStation console five years from now and basically have their investment fall by the wayside. So for all of those reasons, I think at $599 we’re offering a very good value to consumers.

CNET: Are you saying there won’t be a PlayStation 4 in five years?

Hirai: Well, I think if you look at the history of the way we’ve run our console business, we’ve always tried to hit a 10-year life cycle. I can’t speculate on when we might launch a new console after PlayStation 3. But my message is that once you become a family in the PlayStation family of products, you become a member of the family. We make sure to take care of you.

When asked about Wii vs PS3 pricing, Hirai later said the following: “Some consumers will compare features or software offerings and decide if they want to use a different console. They also need to realize that we have a very strong, console market leader called the PlayStation 2, which is very affordable right now. Consumers will also understand that if you buy a PlayStation 2 right now and make some investments in software, when you feel like it’s right to switch to PlayStation 3,” those software titles are not going to fall by the wayside. Consumers will take it into account. I don’t think price is the only determining factor when consumers make a decision when looking at their console purchase decisions.”

When you consider all of this, I think the clear message Hirai is saying is that even WITH a new system, the old system still has a lot of value because the new one will still be able to play your old games, and because the old one will still have new games released for it. You don’t have a system like Sega where all of a sudden the genesis is replaced by the Sega Saturn until they both fail. You don’t have the PlayStation replaced like you do with the Nintendo 64 suddenly replaced by the game cube.

If you read the full interview, there’s nothing about this content taken in context that would lead you to conclude that “Hirai suggests PS4 is more than ten years away” (or even five). That’s not to say it won’t take around 10 years either. It’s just Hirai reassuring anyone interested in a PlayStation 3, that you won’t have to worry about the PS4 making your PS3 games irrelevant. This is interesting with the speculation that PS4 games won’t be discs. Perhaps there is a way to transfer information digitally from the PS3 to the PS4. Maybe buy games on the Internet like you can now.

Assuming both interviews are truthful and consistent, then if Ken Kutaragi said the PS4 is coming in the next decade; and Hirai’s statement indicated that having every Sony PlayStation last 10 years or more would only make sense if you were talking about the shelf life, rather than the number of years before the next product is released.

So there’s still a chance that the PS4 will release in the next few years, but anything that suggests it won’t be until 2016 or later just doesn’t have any real evidence to back it up.