Former PlayStation chief calls the PS3 Sony's Icarus moment: "We flew too close to the sun, and we were lucky and happy to have survived the experience"

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Former PlayStation chief Shawn Layden admits the PS3 was Sony's "Icarus" moment that left everyone "happy to have survived the experience."

Sony is celebrating 30 years of PlayStation this week – a history that includes the highs of the PS2 and, well, the lows of the PS3. Reflecting on the console in a new interview with Eurogamer, Layden calls the PS3 an "Icarus" moment for Sony as the team "flew too close to the sun." While everyone was thankful to have made it through, they did so with plenty of lessons learned.

"We had PS1, PS2... and now we're building a supercomputer!" Layden recalls. "And we're going to put Linux on it! And we're going to do all these sorts of things! We flew too close to the sun and we were lucky and happy to have survived the experience, but it taught us a lot.

"And going to PS4, we learned things like: buy it, don't build it, if you can. You can manage the cost better. You can argue with vendors, get better deals instead of building your own thing."

Layden goes on to say that Sony took the lesson that the "center" of the PS4 has to be gaming, not the likes of streaming movies or playing music.

"Just make it the best game machine of all time," he says. "I think that's what really made the difference. When PS4 came out, it set us against what Xbox was trying to do. [They wanted to] build more of a multimedia experience, and we just wanted to build a kick-ass game machine."

While the PS3 didn't reach the heights of Sony's other consoles, it eventually reached profitability. The machine didn't boast the online capabilities of the Xbox 360 and, per Layden, tried to do too much in general. Regardless, PS3 hardware eventually landed in the green after a "long time." The PS4, meanwhile, with lessons learned, was essentially a "non-loss product from day one."

The PS3 is still Sony's most expensive console adjusted for inflation, but unlike the $700 PS5 Pro it didn't charge $110 extra for a disc drive and stand.