Sonos has stated they will provide updates for products at least 5 years after production stops, minimum.  Most will be much longer.  The play:3 stopped production around 2 years ago I believe, so you have at least 3 years, minimum, most likely much longer.

Really, it’s too far out into the future for anyone to predict with any accuracy what exactly will happen with play:3s.  It’s going to depend a lot own how fast tech advances, whether features can be done with older hardware, and customer demand for these features.  Others may disagree, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that neither customers or Sonos were all that happy with the S1/S2 event.

And to be clear, no one has been forced to upgrade their legacy speakers. 

I’ve got the same question about 5 Play 1s I have. I understand the 5 year software support thing, but I would fully expect the speakers to go on working as long as the hardware is working. Sonos are providing security patches for legacy components as part of the S1 plan. However, you can’t move speakers from S2 to S1, so if I upgrade to S2, and then speakers gradually stop working with S2, what happens to them? They haven’t forced hardware upgrades yet but will they?

It took 15 years to go from S1 to S2, and the majority of S2 devices have 8 to 16 times the resources of the legacy devices.  However, to expect streaming units that must heavily ineract with others within the system to remain capable of carrying on indefinitely until the hardware quits is absurd in the era of smart devices.  To do so would mean no new features could ever be added, and nobody would buy them if they weren’t updated with new features.  

I’ve been a Sonos fan, customer, beta tester and promoter for all of those 15 years. I invested heavily into my speakers at home and office when the solution surfaced back then and still rely on the connect:amp legacy products. While I have spent tens of thousands, a friend I recommended this to long ago is in the low hundreds of thousands.

He called me this morning on this topic. I am sure a lot of people are talking about the upgrade to S2. Sonos support can abandon the old hardware but the apps need to have backward compatibility or people will ask “whats next?”.

The new features are probably great. But I, for one of many, will not convert to S2 if I cant control my old amps. Replacing perfectly functioning amps for thousands of dollars - even at a 30% discount- wont make me happy and I’ll research the alternatives for the first time in 15 years if thats the push I receive.

So let me use S1 on all devices with legacy functions and let me use S2 in parallel for newer devices and newer features. Maintain that for S3 some day.

Not going to happen.  I'd explain why in great technical detail, but you won't believe me, so why bother?  But I'll leave this here so you can come back to it later and realize I was correct. 

Well if it doesn’t make sense, your right. I won’t believe you. 
and it doesn’t look like I’ll have any reason to come back here

Oh it makes perfect sense, if you are willing to look at facts and know a few concepts of engineering.  

I have to say I do expect the hardware to be able to play music for as long as it switches on, even if it limits the more advanced features of the newer devices on my system. When I paid good money for the Play 1s I was buying a physical speaker that streamed music. I don’t see why software progress should take that away. I understand I may not be able to be part of the future, but I should always have option to continue as per the day I bought the speaker if I choose. Otherwise they should be sold with expirey dates. 
 

Anyway, I phoned Sonos and specifically asked if current S2 compatible devices would ever stop being S2 compatible. The answer was No. So anything that can use S2 now, will always be able to use S2. That means that if all your system goes up to S2 - you don’t have to worry about speakers becoming useless later (as there is no official downgrade to S1). Note: apparently you can factory reset pre 2020 devices that have been upgraded to S2 and then add them back to an S1 system - but Sonos don’t say that and the guy I spoke to stood by saying it can’t be done (although also conceded he hadn’t tried it). I was told it was possible by poster on another thread. 

So for the moment I get my wish above - if there is a future S3 or similar I expect the Play 1s wouldn’t be included - but at least I could choose to stay on S2 and continue to use them until the hardware fails. As I should be able to. If you currently have too much of your system non-S2 compatible, then now is the time to stick. No speaker will ever stop working, according to the latest policy anyway. 

Not sure what ‘in parallel’ means in this context.  You can run your legacy speakers in an S1 system, and have modern speakers in an S2 system, generally refered to as a split system.  If that’s what ‘in parallel’ means, then you’re good.  If it means something else, I have no idea.

Just wanted to check your understanding - this is what they are offering. You can run all S2 compatible on S2 and all S1 only compatible on S1. The downside is that they can’t talk to each other so you can’t group components on separate systems together. 

All 2020 devices and onwards are only S2 compatible which is the real rub for me. It means that if you are sticking with S1, you gradually will only be able to buy second hand (making sure those devices haven’t been upgraded to S2 - or that the factory reset hack I mentioned in another post works). 

This sounds great in theory, but the problem is that ‘play music’ isn’t an unchanging constant in most cases.  If you’re source of music is a streaming service, that’s going to be changing over time and the code that used to work to play that streaming service today may not work tomorrow.  In which case Sonos would need to modify the firmware on the speaker, if it’s even possible given hardware limitations.  Since Sonos can’t know what other companies are going to do, they can’t provide expirey dates.  They have stated 5 years minimum.

The above is oversimplifying things a bit, but the point is that in an integrated world, things are going to move forward whether you like them or not, and there is only so much Sonos can do to keep things stagnate.

Yes, you can move a speaker between S1 and S2 via factory reset.  I’ve done that experiment myself.  Not guaranteed to work forever though.  I would say it’s useful to do that now while people are settling on the right balance between S1 and S2 systems, but not something I would plan on doing a year from now.

this was helpful, thanks very much  @melvimbe 

Here’s my path...
When I opened the new (S2) Sonos app on my phone, it detected S1 and S2 compatible devices and stated I have options:

• “Open Sonos S1 Controller to control or update this system”
• “Set up a new system using the Sonos S2 app.”

Then two buttons:

“Open S1 Controller” - which opens the S1 app without changing anything, or

“More Options” which then has the following list of links:

“About my system”

“Forget my system”

“Submit diagnostics”

“Reset App”

“Sonos customer care”

I assume, based on your definition of a split system, to use S2 in addition to S1, my choice is to “Forget Current Sonos System”. Which would remove it from S2 but leave it remaining for S1 and its apps on my various devices? With 4 family members carrying a mobile and laptop app each, along with integrations with Alexa and too many streaming services, I dont want to have it forget everything then require me to rebuild the S1 environment for the legacy devices. Thats the way the option looked to me and another friend working on this right now. 

I get that OTA updates wont work on devices made over a decade ago, and everyone benefits from the innovation in the new ones. (I love the Move!)
But this could be handled better. such as, instead of “Forget my system”, why not “Configure S2 controller”?

It is a bit confusing. You have to open the S1 controller, remove nonS2 compatible devices, then go to the S2 controller and update what’s left of the system to S2.
 

Then go back to the S1 controller - it will give you a warning about not being compatible with the system (as you’ve just upgraded it to S2). tell it to forget the system and then create a new S1 system with your S1 only devices. 

Thanks for the note, @Bert_T 

Clarifying the results for “forget the system” helps

Well, after another hour on this last night I put up the white flag. This is my oldest amp and the only one still Gen 1. It may be 14 years old. My other Gen 1’s have already died and been replaced. 
Turns out S2 is compatible with Gen 2 amps however, along with everything else I own, so buying the latest amp as a replacement is a one minute shopping cart solution, with help from a 30% upgrade discount from Sonos.  
It looks like your Play 1s are also compatible with S2. 
Here is a good reference page https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786?language=en_US

I suspect that you were on this community page because your system tells you that your Play1s are not compatible. Which would make this chart incorrect 

S2 has some valuable features worth the jump (and further vendor lock-in!)
While I kinda think this could be planned obsolescence, it doesn’t smell like that when you get into the support pages. Hardware has come a long way in 14 years. Palm Pilots don’t work today either. 

Haha no they don’t. 
 

Glad you got sorted. Play1s are compatible I was just worried that at some point they would stop working with S2. Sonos support confirmed that will not be the case though. 
 

I think I’m the end this is not too bad. I am having to lose a Connect as a result but as you say the 30% discount is very nice - especially as you can spend it on any new product. I didn’t really use the connect much anymore anyway so I’m finally going to get that Sub!