The exact number of PlayStation 3 consoles that were ever produced has been revealed, according to a current Sony employee.
In what started as a discussion on Twitter about the PS3’s infamous boomerang controller, a Sony programmer responded that they had walked past the controller in Sony’s Japan headquarters recently and that it was located on the 16th floor near a coffee machine.
The employee took a picture of the boomerang controller in the display case, and on the shelf under it, there was a PS3 console marked with the words, “In memory of PS3 last production. Manufactured 88,159,116 pcs. Period: Oct 2006 – June 2016.”
So there you have it. It seems like a little over 88 million PS3 consoles were ever manufactured over a period of almost 10 years. The last official sales figure for the PS3 was around 87.4 million consoles sold as of March 2017.
Last year, former Sony president Shawn Layden confirmed the exact number of PSP units manufactured, showing a unit with the same phrasing as the PS3 one seen in the Sony employee’s photo.
PS3 games can still be played today on modern hardware through PlayStation Plus, but only by streaming them. Users have been clamoring for some sort of native backwards compatibility with PS3 games. There have been rumors floating around about emulation on PS5, but it’s unclear if it’ll ever be delivered due to the PS3’s unique architecture.