How do you combat a system that's only twice as powerful as an older console? With an even older console, apparently.

Hot on the heels of the leak that God of War 2 would be coming out in 2007, and that it would inexplicably be released for the PS2, comes word (and by word I mean rumor) that the PS2 will not be retired when the PS3 is released, but instead will be kept as competition for the Revolution.

The plan, according to a guy who claims to work for Adobe:

“Sony intend to make it their ‘Revolution Killer’. They’re working on tying in Eyetoy and some kind of controller similar to the Revolution controller. With a 100M+ userbase, tens of thousands of mature and documented dev kits and the very low cost of producing Rev style games on the PS2 platform they’re expecting to mobilise another 50M units over the next 5 years precipitated by a $99 price point in 2007.”

Is it possible? Eh, conceivably. The PS2 has a huge installed base and would definitely be cheap by then. Would Sony do it? I dunno. The PS2 has been showing its age for years now, it's going to seem ancient by then. God of War 2 coming out on the PS2 doesn't even make sense because I seriously doubt it'd be able to use any kind of remote style controller without a dramatic shift in its gameplay.

Not to mention that Sony would be, in a sense, competing with themselves. You could say it's a different demographic, but according to this rumor they'd be relying on the dozens of millions of PS2s already out there, which are owned primarily by the same demographic who would buy the PS3.

The whole thing doesn't add up very well. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony keeps the PS2 supported for a while after the PS3 launch due to the massive number of PS2 owners and the small fraction of them who are going to make the first jump to the new system. That's a lot of consumers left behind. And they'll probably try some more interactive, Revolution-y type stuff with the Eye Toy to try and keep up. But the idea of a full plan to essentially copy the Revolution for the PS2, down to the controller, seems a little far fetched right now.

Source: Kotaku