PlayStation 3
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50 free PlayStation 3 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The PlayStation 3 had one of the rockiest starts in console history and one of the strongest finishes. It arrived expensive and hard to develop for, then spent years building a library that fills best-of lists, from open-world crime sagas and racing simulators to cinematic adventures that changed what a blockbuster game could be. This quiz starts where most searches do, with the best-selling PS3 games: which titles topped the charts, who made them, and what happens in them. Around those sit questions on the machine itself, its unusual processor, its controllers and online services, and the odd places the console turned up outside the living room. It is pitched for anyone who owned a PS3 or played one at a friend's house. Most questions are friendly, and every answer comes with a short explanation worth retelling; a few are reserved for players who kept theirs running to the very end.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which crime epic starring Michael, Franklin and Trevor is the best-selling PlayStation 3 game of all time?
Grand Theft Auto V
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.
Q 02The original PlayStation 3's logo used lettering inspired by the title font of which superhero film?
Spider-Man
Spider-Man, the 2002 film, came from sister company Sony Pictures. The logo was one of the first design elements chosen for the console.
Q 03Which branch of the US military wired 1,760 PS3 consoles together to build a cut-price supercomputer?
US Air Force
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.
Q 04Which disc format did the PS3 help to victory in a format war by using it for games?
Blu-ray
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.
Q 05The Sixaxis, the PS3's launch controller, shipped without which familiar feature because of a patent lawsuit?
Vibration
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.
Q 06Which racing game, featuring the Top Gear test track, is the best-selling PS3 exclusive of all?
Gran Turismo 5
Gran Turismo 5 sold nearly 12 million copies. It was the first entry in its series to model both mechanical and external crash damage.
Q 07Which PS3 game follows smuggler Joel escorting immune teenager Ellie across a fungus-ravaged United States?
The Last of Us
The Last of Us takes its infection from Cordyceps, a real genus of fungus. The story later became an HBO television series.
Q 08PS3 owners could donate idle console power to a Stanford University project that simulated what?
Protein folding
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.
Q 09What is the name of the customisable rag-doll hero of the PS3 platformer LittleBigPlanet?
Sackboy
Sackboy has his adventures narrated by Stephen Fry. The studio behind him, Media Molecule, was formed by four former Lionhead Studios employees.
Q 10Which treasure hunter, voiced by Nolan North, stars in the PS3's Uncharted adventure games?
Nathan Drake
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.
Q 11War veteran Niko Bellic steps off a cargo ship into which fictional metropolis, Rockstar's version of New York?
Liberty City
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.
Q 12Which vengeful Spartan climbs Mount Olympus to kill his father Zeus in the PS3's God of War III?
Kratos
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.
Q 13Which Japanese game director created the Metal Gear series and directed its PS3 chapter, Guns of the Patriots?
Hideo Kojima
Q 21A BBC Watchdog report on failing PS3 consoles investigated which colour "light of death"?
Yellow
Yellow was the colour of the warning light on a dying console. Sony disputed the 2009 programme, calling its report misleading.
Q 22Until a 2010 firmware update removed the option, early PS3 consoles let owners install which operating system?
Linux
Linux ran through a feature called OtherOS, which Sony removed citing security concerns. Owners sued, and the company settled with them in 2016.
Q 23Sony developed the PS3's Cell processor together with Toshiba and which American computing giant?
IBM
IBM, Sony and Toshiba called their alliance STI and spent about US$400 million over four years designing the chip.
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.
Q 14Which Star Wars actor voices the Joker in Batman: Arkham City, one of the PS3's biggest sellers?
Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill announced that Arkham City would be his last turn as the villain. He returned anyway for the sequel, Arkham Knight.
Q 15Which former outlaw must hunt down his old gang to free his family in Rockstar's western Red Dead Redemption?
John Marston
John Marston rides through 1911, during the decline of the American frontier. In the epilogue, players take control of his son Jack instead.
Q 16Lightning, a former soldier fighting to save her sister, leads which PS3 role-playing game set on floating Cocoon?
Final Fantasy XIII
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.
Q 17Uncharted 2: Among Thieves follows a trail left by which Italian explorer's doomed voyage?
Marco Polo
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.
Q 18Which Call of Duty game follows CIA operative Alex Mason through the Cold War of the 1960s?
Black Ops
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.
Q 19Bike messenger Cole MacGrath survives an explosion and gains which superpower in the PS3 game Infamous?
Electricity
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.
Q 20The murderer who drowns his victims in the PS3 thriller Heavy Rain goes by what nickname?
Origami Killer
Origami Killer comes from the folded paper figure left near each victim. Director David Cage wrote a 2,000-page script for the game.
Q 24The PS3's lifetime sales of about 87 million consoles narrowly edged past which rival machine?
Xbox 360
Xbox 360 was narrowly overtaken in the end, but neither machine caught the cheaper Wii, the best seller of that console generation.
Q 25The first PS3 controller design, shown at E3 2005 but never sold, was nicknamed after which object?
A boomerang
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.
Q 26Which Sony executive, known as the Father of the PlayStation, pictured the PS3 as a living-room supercomputer?
Ken Kutaragi
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.
Q 27The PS3's wand-shaped Move controller is tracked by a camera that follows what on its tip?
A glowing orb
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.
Q 28Which PS3 service was a 3D social world where each avatar received a personal apartment to decorate?
PlayStation Home
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.
Q 29On the PlayStation Network, which top-tier trophy is awarded for unlocking every other trophy in a game?
Platinum
Platinum sits above the bronze, silver and gold awards handed out for individual feats. Smaller games generally do not offer one at all.
Q 30The XrossMediaBar, the icon-row menu of the PS3 and PSP, won which entertainment award for its technology?
An Emmy
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.