Sony Worldwide president says PS3 will last at least for "the next couple of years"

GamesIndustry spoke with Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida about the future of the PS3 going forward with the launch of the PlayStation 4 just six weeks away, and he says he is holding out hope that the current-gen console will continue to thrive in the next few years due to the price difference between it and its successor.

"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," Yoshida said. "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."

Yoshida also referenced the cross-generational nature of many upcoming games, both big-budget and indie, as well as how some new games will be current-gen only even next year.