PlayStation 3 turns five years old

Microsoft isn’t the only one celebrating a gaming anniversary this month. Five years ago today, the PlayStation 3 arrived in America with a Blu-ray player, user-replaceable 60GB hard drive, backwards compatibility for both original PlayStation and PS2 games, and the ability to boot Linux — at the time, that was all a pretty big deal at a somewhat controversial price of $600 ($673 inflation adjusted). That was only the beginning of an exciting ride: we’ve seen PS2 backwards compatibility discontinued, removal of USB ports and memory card readers, the death of Linux, angry customers, hacking (GeoHot), lawsuits, more hacking (Anonymous), and a long and painful PlayStation Network outage. However, we’ve also seen Uncharted, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Little Big Planet, Resistance, and the epic interactive film, Metal Gear Solid 4. In the end, Sony’s come out with over 50 million units sold, driven significantly by the slimmer, cheaper version made possible by many of the sacrifices previously mentioned. Let’s all celebrate by reminiscing in the comments below.