Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison has echoed Kaz Hirai's belief that Sony's PlayStation 3 will enjoy a lifespan of ten years, pointing out that the key to such longevity will lie with the machine's Blu-ray drive.

Chatting to GameDaily, Harrison was adamant that the decision to include the drive would prove to be a wise one. "The blue laser diode, as you well know, had a blip short-term ramp up issue, which is now past; that's now behind us," he remarked, adding, "That did cause us some challenges in being able to supply the launch worldwide, but that's all resolved.

"We needed to have Blu-ray disc from a game design point of view, the chipsets in PS3 chew through data at such a rate that in order to build variety and detail and quality into the games, we need more than nine gigabytes. The fact that we could also adopt the pre-eminent next-generation movie format into PS3 was an added bonus, not an added cost. Those are the decisions that are going to propel PlayStation 3 to be a platform that lasts for ten years, like we've seen with PS1 and PS2."