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At long last, end of the line for the Sony PlayStation 3

Shipments have stopped in Japan for the PS3, which outlived its original planned 10-year lifespan.

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
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The end of Sony 's PlayStation 3 console has been a done deal for some time now, with shipments to the US stopping in October 2016, and production of new units for Japan, the last place Sony was still selling new PS3 consoles , already concluded.

Now that stockpile of the last PlayStation 3 consoles has been sold or warehoused, and shipments of that last model, a charcoal black console with a 500GB hard drive, have ceased, according to a statement by Sony Tuesday to inside-games.jp. US gamers have already gotten used to this -- a quick check of Amazon shows only third-party sellers offering PS3 consoles, while Best Buy isn't offering the PS3 at all.

A Google translation of Sony's Japanese-language page for that final PS3 model reads, "Shipment complete," which Sony confiremd for us when asked.

The groundbreaking console was released in November 2006, with Sony claiming to have a 10-year plan for the system. This puts the PS3 just a bit past that mark.