50 Fun Facts About PlayStation 3

Which crime epic starring Michael, Franklin and Trevor is the best-selling PlayStation 3 game of all time?

Grand Theft Auto V sold more than 24 million copies on PS3 alone. It earned $1 billion in its first three days, faster than any entertainment product before it.

The original PlayStation 3's logo used lettering inspired by the title font of which superhero film?

Spider-Man, the 2002 film, came from sister company Sony Pictures. The logo was one of the first design elements chosen for the console.

Which branch of the US military wired 1,760 PS3 consoles together to build a cut-price supercomputer?

US Air Force researchers nicknamed their machine the Condor Cluster. It analysed high-definition satellite imagery at about a tenth of the cost of a traditional supercomputer.

Which disc format did the PS3 help to victory in a format war by using it for games?

Blu-ray became the dominant standard over its rival partly because every PS3 could play it. The console was also the first to ship with an HDMI port.

The Sixaxis, the PS3's launch controller, shipped without which familiar feature because of a patent lawsuit?

Vibration was cut while Sony fought a patent case brought by the haptics firm Immersion. Rumble returned with the DualShock 3 after the two companies settled.

Which racing game, featuring the Top Gear test track, is the best-selling PS3 exclusive of all?

Gran Turismo 5 sold nearly 12 million copies. It was the first entry in its series to model both mechanical and external crash damage.

Which PS3 game follows smuggler Joel escorting immune teenager Ellie across a fungus-ravaged United States?

The Last of Us takes its infection from Cordyceps, a real genus of fungus. The story later became an HBO television series.

PS3 owners could donate idle console power to a Stanford University project that simulated what?

Protein folding research for new medicines got such a boost from PS3s that the project became the first computing system of any kind to pass one petaFLOPS.

What is the name of the customisable rag-doll hero of the PS3 platformer LittleBigPlanet?

Sackboy has his adventures narrated by Stephen Fry. The studio behind him, Media Molecule, was formed by four former Lionhead Studios employees.

Which treasure hunter, voiced by Nolan North, stars in the PS3's Uncharted adventure games?

Nathan Drake claims to be a descendant of the Elizabethan explorer Sir Francis Drake. His first outing sends him after the lost treasure of El Dorado.

War veteran Niko Bellic steps off a cargo ship into which fictional metropolis, Rockstar's version of New York?

Liberty City sits beside the fictional state of Alderney, which is modelled on New Jersey. Niko's game took a record US$310 million on its first day on sale.

Which vengeful Spartan climbs Mount Olympus to kill his father Zeus in the PS3's God of War III?

Kratos has to fight his own half-brother Hercules on the way up, a role voiced by Kevin Sorbo. His main weapons this time are the Blades of Exile.

Which Japanese game director created the Metal Gear series and directed its PS3 chapter, Guns of the Patriots?

Hideo Kojima also wrote and designed the game, which sends a rapidly ageing hero nicknamed Old Snake on one last mission. An in-game Apple iPod lets players change the music.

Which Star Wars actor voices the Joker in Batman: Arkham City, one of the PS3's biggest sellers?

Mark Hamill announced that Arkham City would be his last turn as the villain. He returned anyway for the sequel, Arkham Knight.

Which former outlaw must hunt down his old gang to free his family in Rockstar's western Red Dead Redemption?

John Marston rides through 1911, during the decline of the American frontier. In the epilogue, players take control of his son Jack instead.

Lightning, a former soldier fighting to save her sister, leads which PS3 role-playing game set on floating Cocoon?

Final Fantasy XIII became the fastest-selling title in its series' history at the time. For the international release, a Leona Lewis track replaced the original Japanese theme song.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves follows a trail left by which Italian explorer's doomed voyage?

Marco Polo's lost fleet, in the game's telling, was wrecked in Borneo while carrying the Cintamani Stone from the fabled city of Shambhala.

Which Call of Duty game follows CIA operative Alex Mason through the Cold War of the 1960s?

Black Ops took US$650 million in its first five days, beating the record set a year earlier. Developer Treyarch also packed in a co-op survival mode called Zombies.

Bike messenger Cole MacGrath survives an explosion and gains which superpower in the PS3 game Infamous?

Electricity can be used for good or evil under the game's Karma system. Studio Sucker Punch wanted a loud change of pace after years of Sly Cooper stealth games.

The murderer who drowns his victims in the PS3 thriller Heavy Rain goes by what nickname?

Origami Killer comes from the folded paper figure left near each victim. Director David Cage wrote a 2,000-page script for the game.

A BBC Watchdog report on failing PS3 consoles investigated which colour "light of death"?

Yellow was the colour of the warning light on a dying console. Sony disputed the 2009 programme, calling its report misleading.

Until a 2010 firmware update removed the option, early PS3 consoles let owners install which operating system?

Linux ran through a feature called OtherOS, which Sony removed citing security concerns. Owners sued, and the company settled with them in 2016.

Sony developed the PS3's Cell processor together with Toshiba and which American computing giant?

IBM, Sony and Toshiba called their alliance STI and spent about US$400 million over four years designing the chip.

The PS3's lifetime sales of about 87 million consoles narrowly edged past which rival machine?

Xbox 360 was narrowly overtaken in the end, but neither machine caught the cheaper Wii, the best seller of that console generation.

The first PS3 controller design, shown at E3 2005 but never sold, was nicknamed after which object?

A boomerang was the shape of the prototype unveiled alongside the console. A year later Sony announced a pad similar in overall design to its earlier DualShock controllers.

Which Sony executive, known as the Father of the PlayStation, pictured the PS3 as a living-room supercomputer?

Ken Kutaragi had earlier designed the sound processor for the Super Nintendo. He left the company in 2007, shortly after the PS3 went on sale.

The PS3's wand-shaped Move controller is tracked by a camera that follows what on its tip?

A glowing orb lit by coloured LEDs sits on top of the wand. The system picks a colour that stands out from the rest of the room the camera can see.

Which PS3 service was a 3D social world where each avatar received a personal apartment to decorate?

PlayStation Home never officially left its testing phase. It opened as a public beta in 2008 and kept the label until it closed in 2015.

On the PlayStation Network, which top-tier trophy is awarded for unlocking every other trophy in a game?

Platinum sits above the bronze, silver and gold awards handed out for individual feats. Smaller games generally do not offer one at all.

The XrossMediaBar, the icon-row menu of the PS3 and PSP, won which entertainment award for its technology?

An Emmy for technology and engineering went to the menu's design. It had first appeared on the PSX, a PS2 with a built-in video recorder.

Which California studio, creator of Crash Bandicoot, developed the Uncharted trilogy for the PlayStation 3?

Naughty Dog released its first PS3 game, the opening Uncharted adventure, in 2007. The sequel, Among Thieves, collected Game of the Year awards from numerous publications.

In which downloadable PS3 hit does a cloaked figure cross a vast desert towards a distant mountain?

Journey pairs strangers online who cannot talk, type or even see each other's names until the credits. Its Austin Wintory score earned a Grammy nomination, a first for a video game soundtrack in its category.

Which Japanese developer made the PS3's Demon's Souls, the forerunner of Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring?

FromSoftware built the game as a spiritual successor to its own King's Field series. Its difficulty was meant to evoke classic games and give players a sense of accomplishment.

The PS3 launch shooter Resistance: Fall of Man angered the Church of England by recreating which city's cathedral?

Manchester Cathedral's interior was recreated inside the game, and the Church accused its makers of promoting violence within the building.

The PS3 off-road racer MotorStorm stages its fictional festival in which real American landscape?

Monument Valley hosts the off-road festival at the heart of the game. Evolution Studios originally developed the racer under the title Stampede.

Which enemy faction's planet do the Vektans invade in the PS3 shooter Killzone 2?

The Helghast are not aliens: the series is a 24th-century war between two human factions. Players fight as Vektan soldier Tomas Sevchenko, known as Sev.

Which detective game set in 1947 was the first video game chosen as an official Tribeca Film Festival selection?

L.A. Noire recorded its actors with 32 surrounding cameras, so players could read a suspect's face during interrogations. The technology was called MotionScan.

Which actor played the tyrant King Bohan and served as dramatic director on the PS3's Heavenly Sword?

Andy Serkis supplied both the voice and the motion capture for the villain. He was also one of the writers of the game's story.

Which Hollywood actor co-stars with Elliot Page as a paranormal researcher in the PS3 game Beyond: Two Souls?

Willem Dafoe plays the researcher who becomes a surrogate father figure to Page's character, Jodie. The game had its premiere at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Which Japanese animation house made the animated sequences for the PS3 role-playing game Ni no Kuni?

Studio Ghibli's art style shaped the whole look of the game. Joe Hisaishi co-composed the original score.

Which American hacker, the first person reported to unlock an iPhone, was sued by Sony for reverse engineering the PS3?

George Hotz, known online as geohot, settled out of court in 2011. The deal required him never again to resume hacking work on Sony products.

Which Hollywood composer provided the main theme for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a multi-million seller on PS3?

Hans Zimmer wrote only the main theme, leaving the rest of the score to Lorne Balfe. Rapper 50 Cent also voiced a squad member in the multiplayer modes.

Which graphics company jointly developed the Reality Synthesizer, the chip that draws the PS3's pictures, with Sony?

Nvidia based the chip on its GeForce 7 series of PC graphics cards, specifically the 7800 GTX. It was announced as Sony's graphics partner in December 2004.

In Uncharted 3, Nate and his mentor Victor Sullivan battle a secret society while hunting for which legendary place?

Iram of the Pillars is a lost city, and the hunt for it pits the pair against Katherine Marlowe, who was once Sullivan's employer.

Which toy pet breed is a key character in Tokyo Jungle, the PS3 survival game set in a deserted Tokyo?

Pomeranian dogs share the story with a Sika deer, a beagle, a spotted hyena and lions. The city has become a vicious wildlife wasteland after humankind's disappearance.

Which role-playing game about Tokyo's Phantom Thieves of Hearts launched on PS3 as well as PS4?

Persona 5 reached the PS3 in Japan in September 2016, almost ten years after the console first went on sale. Its high-school hero goes by the codename Joker.

Portal 2 was the first PS3 game to link up with which PC gaming service?

Steam features such as automatic updates arrived on the console with the game. PS3 owners could even team up with friends playing on Windows and Mac computers.

After a 2011 hack shut down the PlayStation Network for weeks, Sony's apology package to players went by what name?

Welcome Back handed every member two free PS3 games and 30 days of PlayStation Plus. The intrusion had exposed details from about 77 million accounts.

Which veteran writer of Batman: The Animated Series scripted Batman: Arkham Asylum, a multi-million seller on PS3?

Paul Dini's game held the Guinness World Record for most critically acclaimed superhero game ever, until its own sequel took the title.

Which early PS3 exclusive cast players as a dragon-riding knight who steered by tilting the Sixaxis controller?

Lair leaned heavily on motion controls. Players even slammed the pad left or right to knock an enemy dragon sideways and out of a fight.