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What's Known About the PS3 234

Posted by Zonk from the devil-in-the-details dept.
1up has an expansive piece up exploring everything they know about the PlayStation 3. They cover rumours, prices, technology, and the limited information currently out there on upcoming games. From the article: "While the hard facts are still tough to nail down, the general consensus is that the PlayStation 3 is the most powerful of the three next-generation systems, although probably not by as much of a margin as Sony would like us to think. The arguments for the technical strengths of the PS3 go into CPU floating-point capabilities and the difficulties surrounding programming for parallel architectures, but the long and short of it is that whether or not the advantages of the PS3 are apparent will depend on developers' ability to utilize the PlayStation 3's unique architecture."
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What's Known About the PS3 More

What's Known About the PS3

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  • With any luck... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PastAustin ( 941464 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @01:58PM (#14843742)
    It won't cost $1,000,000 and thanks to Sony not having Microsoft's "Rush To The Market" attitude you don't have to worry about it melting to your carpet!

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dimentox ( 678813 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:01PM (#14843771)
      Thats a feature of the X-Box 360, "a portable foot heater and Cooking stove."

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:4, Funny)

      by PastAustin ( 941464 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:03PM (#14843789)
      FTA: Even Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi has been quoted as saying "It'll be expensive [...] I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households."


      Hell Yes! I've always wanted a PS3 at work. I knew it would happen!

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      and thanks to Sony not having Microsoft's "Rush To The Market" attitude you don't have to worry about it melting to your carpet!

      Considering all the launch problems with PS2 this is good if it's meant as irony, and funny if not.

    • Re:With any luck... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tonywong ( 96839 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @05:22PM (#14845925) Homepage
      Let's be realistic here. In NO way is Sony going to ship this in Q1 06. Where are the production SAMPLE units, SKUs or final plastics? No one has even developer SDKs that are in any way finished or polished (besides Sony owned entities) and they are still throwing about theoretical performance numbers. If Sony was any way serious about launching in this time frame, you'd see their factories gearing up for such a launch. The only thing happening here is that they're trying to steal away hype from the 360 launch...and doing pretty well at that it seems.
    • I wouldn't be so sure. If they had solid plans, they'd say exactly what they where.

      I suspect it's a moving target. If they where going to make a spring, 2006, they'd have started up production already, and someone would leak that they're making components for the beast.

  • The next gen Phantom (Score:5, Funny)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Friday March 03, 2006 @01:59PM (#14843754) Homepage Journal
    ...is the PS3. Yes, this will have TWICE the delays with its new marketing and rumor engine. Capable of thousands of speculations a second!

    (it's a joke kids, someday that PS3 will come out).

  • More emphasis on functional languages. (Score:4, Funny)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:00PM (#14843757)
    In the near future we may see more emphasis being placed on strict functional languages, such as Haskell, for such massively multithreaded and parallel development at the commodity level. Many of the issues associated with concurrent development with traditional imperative or imperative OO languages can be avoided via stateless computation.

    Even a language like Erlang may begin to gain widespread popularity among game developers, as they begin to see the benefits that it brings when writing multithreaded applications.

    With more industry support behind such technology, we may witness a computing revolution. It has been decades in the making, but its time is quickly coming upon us.

    • Firstly, Haskell isn't strict, it's lazy. Secondly, this isn't funny.

      Code written in languages with strong algebraic properties like referential transparency is ideal for doing automatic high-level transformations of code in order to increase parallelism.

      As architectures get more complicated with multiple processors and multiple pipelines, we will more and more want to rely on automatic tools to search for good ways to structure code, from breaking up major processes right down to instruction level scheduli

  • why the big secret? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by psycho chic ( 958251 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:01PM (#14843768) Journal
    i think the thing that gets me is "hey, why all the secrecy?" if you are gonna release a product, at least TRY to convince me its better then the competition. when people start getting (publically) fired for making opinions known, it makes you wonder
    • "hey, why all the secrecy?"

      It works for Apple. Well, at least it did until they made a big stink about a crappy "boombox" and 100 dollar leather case (with an Apple logo!).

    • Re:why the big secret? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by smaddox ( 928261 )
      You've obvioulsy never heard of a little game called Fable.

      The developers started talking about it 2 years before its release, and hyped it up to be the best thing in the world with all these amazing features. Problem is, by the time it was released, 90% of those features had been cut due to problems with implementation, and time and budget limits.

      Hyping up a product should only be done when you know exactly what the product is, because otherwise, you just spent a bunch of advert money on something that
      • Yeah, Fable had a lot of potenial, but the original release was unfinished. I still liked the game, and the rerelease of it was a big improvement, but it still should have been much better.

  • Other things known about the PS3: (Score:5, Funny)

    by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:02PM (#14843777) Homepage Journal
    Other things known about the PS3:

    * It is not a strapless evening gown.

    * Ducks may not try to mate with it.

    * It is not a flotation device.

    * Is not a good substitute for snow chains.

    * It will not remove tough grease stains.

    * It will not get you an automatic first post on Slashdot.

    • Re:Other things known about the PS3: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      * It is not a flotation device.

      The Nintendo Revolution, on the other hand...
    • * Do not taunt PS3.
    • Other things known about the PS3:

      * It is not a strapless evening gown.

      But, you will be able to play games where female anime characters with big guns and ... um ... big guns are wearing strapless evening gowns.

      And also martial arts games where you can have female characters with said gowns.

      If you're into that kind of thing.
    • "* It will not get you an automatic first post on Slashdot."

      But with all of those processing elements...OMG..it will, like, write my posts for me so I won't even have to think! It will simply be amazing and be able to display graphics in a higher resolution than the human eye can see! There is nothing that the PS3 can't do!

  • More power, $400, Anime Dating, Puppies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:02PM (#14843778) Homepage Journal
    OK, so it's slightly more powerful than the xBox360, will probably retail around $400 without HDD (and $500 for Net/HDD config bundle) (figure initial cost to start at $500 so they can drop to $400 over a year, unless you get it cheap at Costco in a bundle), has 100-150 original content games, including an Anime Dating sim "Akira Project", a Nintendogs non-clone "Active Dogs", a lot of wierd anime games, a lot of RPGs, a lot of scary games, the obligitory sports games, the obligitory FPS games, Bomberman, Clown Combat (yup), ...

    OK, looks like xBox360 is going to lose a lot of market share when it ships, probably starting in December when most of the new titles ship.

    Hmm, maybe I should sell my MSFT stock ...
    • OK, looks like xBox360 is going to lose a lot of market share when it ships, probably starting in December when most of the new titles ship.

      Probably since the XBox 360 has 100% market share for the newest generation.
      • Well, I'm just basing this on the actual games that will be there by December for the PS3, and their broad range of appeal, which will give the PS3 a category killer that has appeal to non-FPS, non-Sports gamers, such as boys, girls, women, and guys who don't like to play FPS because they spent too many years actually doing that when they were in the Army and it tenses them up too much so it's more fun to play other games.

        But, hey, whatever. I'm still saying, since I've seen no real moves in the 360 area t

    • Re:More power, $400, Anime Dating, Puppies (Score:5, Funny)

      by amliebsch ( 724858 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:25PM (#14843990) Journal
      OKAY. We GET it. You have Microsoft stock. You can stop mentioning it in practically every thread you post in.
    • OK, so it's slightly more powerful than the xBox360, will probably retail around $400 without HDD (and $500 for Net/HDD config bundle) (figure initial cost to start at $500 so they can drop to $400 over a year, unless you get it cheap at Costco in a bundle), has 100-150 original content games, including an Anime Dating sim "Akira Project", a Nintendogs non-clone "Active Dogs", a lot of wierd anime games, a lot of RPGs, a lot of scary games, the obligitory sports games, the obligitory FPS games, Bomberman, C
      • You also have to consider MS may be in a position to drop the 360 price tag by the time the PS3 comes out. I have no idea if it will, but it seems like the smart thing to do.

        Absolutely. Microsoft is going to want to counter the PS3 launch somehow, and cutting the 360's price to significantly below the PS3's is a no-brainer.

        The interesting thing is that having the highest sale price in the market can be a GOOD thing -- it can make the product seem more elite and powerful than the competition. How many game
        • The interesting thing is that having the highest sale price in the market can be a GOOD thing -- it can make the product seem more elite and powerful than the competition. How many gamers will buy a PS3 BECAUSE it's $200 more than the 360 and Revolution, assuming that it must therefore be $200 better than those consoles?

          Ehh, the increased price and power didn't really help the first Xbox surpass the PS2 did it? I'll grant you that it may help a bit. With cross-platform titles, I tended to choose the Xbox ve

  • Too many variables, too little information (Score:5, Interesting)

    by netnemmy ( 947142 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:02PM (#14843779) Homepage
    The thing that's going to kill the PS3 is the price. If they don't release at the same point, or less, than the X-box, people are going to have to strain their wallets to afford this thing. Very few people are about to spend $800 for a console - there's a lot better ways to spend that money (you could even buy a 360, and several games).

    Not to mention that, by the time the PS3 comes out, there will be many titles available for the 360. Although (as TFA shows) there are a good deal of games in development, the 360's titles will have matured while those for the PS3 will remain untested.

    Finally, the longer it takes for Sony to put this console out, the less people will have confidence in it. Console developers are always hush-hush about their products, but at this point, it would do Sony well to clarify some things; they keep saying that they're going to release on-schedule, but nobody else sees how they can possibly do that. If they _do_ release on schedule, I for one will be forced to assume that it was rushed to market, and therefore not worth the risk (especially at that price).

    • It's what's inside the box that counts (Score:4, Informative)

      by wuffalicious ( 896539 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:22PM (#14843950)
      I was under the impression that the original Playstation 2 took a while to come out as well, and did just fine on release despite the dreamcast being available long before it (and, in some ways, being a superior piece of hardware). I look at all the hype that's being slung around, and I wonder why people obsess so much about the systems themselves. Ultimately it's going to come down to a matter of games - it doesn't matter what your system is capable of if no one developes for it. The Dreamcast should be proof positive of that.

      Release titles are what will matter - how many people would have picked up an xbox had it not been for Halo?
    • After selling 3 xbox 360s to idiots who paid $1000 apiece for them, I don't feel that price is way out of line for people to pay.

  • Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:03PM (#14843793) Homepage Journal
    XBox360: Most hype.
    PlayStation 3: Most CPU power.
    Nintendo Revolution: Most fun.

    Personally I'd say Nintendo is the best in the means of innovation. The competitors are just "the same old, just faster, better, stronger", while Nintendo takes a step in a completely new direction.

    • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fr0dicus ( 641320 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:13PM (#14843871) Journal
      Weird, I found Nintendo least fun this time round. Waiting for games to trickle out isn't my idea of fun.
      • There are certainly more games being released for other platforms, but honestly, how many good games get released? Nintendo generally releases good games, but they don't do so very often. On the other platforms, you have tons of crappy sports titles, Barbie Horse Adventures, Generic Shooter #57, and Collection of Old Arcade Games released every month, sure, but how often do you get a GTA or a Halo? Is it really less often than you get a Zelda, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, or Killer 7?
        • I have to say that the PS2 games by far appealed to me the most. GTA, Guitar Hereo, DDR (although now it's multi-platform), and Gran Turismo. Of course, I'm not a fan of 3rd person shooters on a console, so nothing for the XBox was really appealing to me that I couldn't get on the PS2. I did want super monkey ball, but had to resort to playing it on a freind's game cube.

      • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Insightful)

        by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @03:25PM (#14844718)
        Waiting for games to trickle out isn't my idea of fun.

        Buying a new game every month or so isn't MY idea of fun. I'd rather have four titles a year with superlative replay value than 20 a year that get stale after three weeks.

    • A correction (Score:3, Insightful)

      by toupsie ( 88295 )
      XBox360: Shipped

    • Re:Short summary: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by acidrain ( 35064 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:30PM (#14844053)
      Sony makes hardware that is difficult to program. But game developers have a financial gun to their heads and will ultimately do whatever it takes.

      Remember how the XBox looked set to eat the PS2's lunch? However after 5 years of hardcore low level programming on freakish hardware the latest round of PS2 titles look just as good as the XBox titles.

      Frankly the PS3 is a *lot* easier to program than the PS2. All the complaining is coming from PC developers (a.k.a the current crop of Unreal engine licensees) who never touched the PS2 and don't know the meaning of pain.

      The weak developers will die out, and the rest will push the PS3 way further than the XBox360.
    • Nintendo Revolution: Most fun.

      Let me guess, from press shows and short demos, or are you one of the elusive alphatesters under NDA? Didn't think so. Yes, it's definately different, and I'm sure that alone will be fun to start with. But when we get together some friends we can easily play the GC for 4-5 hours straight (just swapping the losers). How? Well because it's tiny little finger movements.

      I honestly can't see any of us waving the revolution controller around for that amount of time. Also, I think it
      • It has been repeatedly stated by people who used it (e.g., Edge magazine), that you can just as well use tiny movements, holding it in your lap, as big ones.
        • That doesn't seem so great either. The smaller the movements required, the more important it is that those movements be precise. Arm and wrists muscles lack the fine motor controls that fingers have. This problem is amplified when not acting against a tensile force like thumbsticks or triggers. Even if you could achieve the same degree of precision controlling a free-floating device with wrist and arm muscles, it will be far more tiring to do so as compared to similar precise movement using fingers.
    • i think they have already won with the DS. that is an amazing platform by any means. Fun to play, cheap. Nintendo is on to something here.
  • Just wait for the damn thing to come out already. Does it really matter if it's got 26 super nano vector spline processing engines with 18 pixel flushers and a quantum video output if it is still vapor? Will it make the games any better if it DOES? No, just prettier with more depth. Boring.

    It's a waste of breath, any of thsoe features can disappear between now and then. Further, I've done HW design long enough to know that the only people who actually know what will and will not work on launch are 2-3 HW guys who actually work on it, and 2-3 SW guys who actually work on it. Their managers, coworkers, beta customers, that guy in procurement? They only know some post-processed garbage that the engineers came up with to get some sleep, or worse, some counter-garbage politics devised by unfriendly managers to look for an excuse for why they can't make a commitment (look up the term "estoppel").

    WoW and Galactic Civilizations 2 should be able to tide all of us over until the console wars v4 have subsided enough to make a buying decision.

  • Played a Cell processor Demo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kraegar ( 565221 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:10PM (#14843852)
    Recently at an IBM conference for pSeries hardware, they gave a small demo on the Cell processor. The demo was a Mac G4 running a sort of flight sim, with data for Mount St. Helens. The display was a 35" flat panel running at some obscene resolution. They began the demo with just the G4 processor, and no help from the Cell. It was painfuly slow, at less then one frame every 5 seconds. Jagged lines were obvious, and it looked terrible.

    In the software demo, they then enabled the cell processor, or re-routed the processing to it in some way (it was hard to tell exactly, and they weren't too forthcoming). The difference was remarkable. 30 - 40 fps, and a crystal clear picture. The data they were using was from (or at least they said it was from) satellite images, GPS data, aerial photo surveys, and USGS maps. It was extremely well rendered, down to pebbles. Clouds and such were just remarkable.

    At the end they offered to let us "fly", so I jumped at it and took the first turn. While not a real game by any stretch, it was a lot of fun to manuever through the terrain and look at the detail. So, taking what they said was going on at face value, the cell was a very impressive processor.

    One thing of note, though... the "cell processor unit" they had hooked up to the G4 was HUGE. Bigger then a standard PC case, with 6 120mm fans on it. Not exactly heartening for something that's supposed to go into a console.

    Still, my impression of it was that it's got a TON of possibility, and it really is working hardware.

  • say no more. I'm getting one.

  • More like "What is not known about the PS3" (Score:4, Informative)

    by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:28PM (#14844031) Journal
    Really, the article is a bit more like "here's the stuff we really don't know the answer to :"

    - when will it ship
    - what will it cost
    - will games actually be able to live up to the great graphics and model/AI processing promised by the Cell processor marketing, or will they look pretty much like XBox360 games ?
    - will there be a halfway decent online component ?
    - is a hard drive included ? An add-on ? What's the deal ?

    All we *really* seem to know is that there's a Cell processor inside, it'll support HD, include a Blu-ray drive, will take some sort of hard drive ( at least as an add-on ), will have built-in networking ( like crazy ), and will have a *ton* of games written for it... seriously, that's a long, long list of games. Oh, and it'll play existing PS2 games, though the article doesn't say that I think it's a well-known given. That and the controller they showed just looks weird.

  • Is will it have a new version of Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi [lucasarts.com]?

    Or, as my friends in college liked to call it: Jedi Bitch-slap

  • Graphics power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:42PM (#14844198) Homepage
    Today, game consoles compete on graphics capbility. I find that kinda funny since most people I know can't tell the difference between 640x480 and 1440x1080, can't distinguish a progressive image from an interlaced one, aren't bothered by aliasing, think 24fps isn't choppy, and can play Mario cart in 1/4th of the screen just fine. I bet the console manufacturers could support 480p, wide screen, and then upscale to everything else. Just keep it above 24fps. The gamers wouldn't notice or care.

    Personally, I'm more interested in new controls and new game play innovation.

    Maybe the consoles are really made just to impress the reviewers?

    • What are the games on the 2600 that were among the best, and never replicate.

      Warlords
      Circus Atari
      Kaboom

      These games were great because largely because of the controller. The joystick/pad has limited us in what we do with games. When Nintendo swapped the buttons from our left hand to our right, we became even more limited in what the games can really do. The Atari paddle was just a pot and a switch, but it allowed a game like Kaboom to be played. There is not a game console out today that can run a
      • When Nintendo swapped the buttons from our left hand to our right, we became even more limited in what the games can really do.

        Buh?

        There is not a game console out today that can run a decent game of Kaboom.

        Zuh?

        (P.S.: the joystick-in-the-left hand originated in the arcades, not with Nintendo, and any console made in the past 25 years could be made to support a paddle controller given under $10 of parts and a couple hours of hobbyist time.)
    • I agree with you that game quality and play are far more important than resolution, but I should point out that I went and bought the xBox version of Sims 2 instead of the GameCube version, due to the better graphics.

      So, for a cross-platform game, I think it's critical.

      For a single-platform, or console (PS3) plus portable (PSP) decision, I don't think it matters that much. It won't make me buy one console over the other.

  • Will it be sold at a loss? Of course! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @02:46PM (#14844252) Homepage Journal
    I'm tired about all the speculation about how much of a loss Sony will take on each initial device. Of course there will be a loss, and the amount of the loss depends MORE on how you decide to distribute the cost of engineering (both at the component level, and at the system level) over the lifespan of the PS3.

    How much will it cost to manufacture, excluding the up front investments? Probably reasonably close to the XBox360. Just look at the pieces. 200M transistor CPU and GPU's cost pretty much the same no matter the design. The cases are reasonably comparable. Power supplies will be similar -- unless the PS3 magically is able to use a whole lot less power than the Xbox, but I doubt it. The one difference major difference would be the DVD drive vs whatever the PS3 will have, but this added expense is offset by helping Sony launch their next-gen DVD format.
    • if it integrates with the PSP and people end up shelling out for:

      PS3 - break even
      PS3 controllers (extra, say two or three) - profit
      PS3 game - profit, after first two
      PSPs to attach and interact with PS3 - profit
      PSP versions of PS3 games that interact with PS3 - profit
      PS3 extra services - classic games, etc - profit

      Not a bad market move.
  • The PS3 is starting to look more and more like a Daikatana scenario. Is Sony changing the specs trying to make it better considering the competition? (As John Romero did with Daikatana) This could be ugly for Sony. All of the Kings of the Industry always come tumbling down sooner or later. (3dfx->NVidia->ATI, Sears->Walmart, etc)

  • Overhyped analysts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by magicsquid ( 85985 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @03:02PM (#14844441) Homepage
    It is obvious to me what Sony is doing with the PS3. They are letting the analysts talk about how expensive it will be. The analysts are commenting on how hard it will be to develop for. The analysts talk about potential delays.

    All this does is get the consumer to expect the worst.

    Then when Sony prices it at $399 and delivers it on time, consumers will flock to it because now to them "It's $400 cheaper than I thought it would be! I've got to go get it!"

    Sony loves right now that people are talking about $800 and $900 price tags. When they deliver at around $400 it will seem like the bargain of the century.

    • Sony loves right now that people are talking about $800 and $900 price tags. When they deliver at around $400 it will seem like the bargain of the century.

      That strategy only works if the competition wasn't already available.

      Instead people will spend their money on the xbox360, and when the PS3 comes out most people will have already purchased a 360 or a revolution.

  • How long will next generation really last? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OzPhIsH ( 560038 ) on Friday March 03, 2006 @03:44PM (#14844956) Journal
    Ok, so everyone is hyping up the power of the cell processor. No doubt the cpu is going to push some impressive numbers when code is correctly optimized for cell. But how long is it going to take developers to really discover and understand how to effectivly use the power of the processor?

    Lets take a look at console history. In every case you can see that for any particular console, the console's first generation games pale in comparison to games created towards the end of the consoles life cycle, at least on technical merit. Game worlds are more complex, graphics are better, AI is better, etc. This is because as time goes on, the developers become more familair with the specific capabilities of with the hardware and learnt o exploit the strengths and avoid the weaknesses. To me at seems that jsut as soon as developers really come to grasp with the specifics of the hardware they're wroking with, the hardware companies decide to release new consoles and the cycle starts over. Developers have to once again start the process of learning the ins and outs of the new hardware. In this case of the recent generation, I'd be hard pressed to say that the XBox and Gamecube games are even close to achieving their maximum potential. We'll never see it though, because, with the exception of 1 or 2 games, their life cycles have effectivly come to end.

    Fast forward to the new generation of consoles that are coming to market. Well except for Nintendo I guess. (Nintendo seems to be trying to avoid this problem by basing the Revolution on a souped up Gamecube architecture. We've all read how they've said they're trying to make it easier on developers). This new generation, more so than any other transition, with the advent of multi-cpu parallel processing is really shaking up the development community. Developers who are used using the same old way of thinking, but just adjusting for specifics of different hardware, now need to completly reevaluate just how to program their software in a way that effectively takes advantage of all the parts of the processor. Many of us are still waiting for quality apps that take advantage of our dual core PC's, which is arguably a much easier platform to code for than the cell.

    So here are my questions:
    1) How long is it going to take developers to really exploit the power of the processor? We've seen that this can take several years, and with cell so radically different, it may take longer than usual.

    2) When is the next-next console cycle going to show it's head (PS4, NextBox, etc)? 4-5 years? I have heard people say Sony intends the PS3 to have a long life (8 years?) but I think that is suicide. Gamers love new consoles and have become quite used to and supportive of the current console life cycle situation. If microsoft or whoever in 5 years comes out with another box thats better, Sony won't idly sit by, they will release a new console of their own or risk losing out.

    3)So based on 1 and 2, I have to ask, by the time the next-next generation of consoles come out, will all this extra power of the cell processor even have been exploited? Based on the current situation of XBox and Gamecube, my prediction is no the maximum potential will not have been reached.

    This brings me to my final point. If a) the cell is going to be initially difficult to program and it takes developers a long time to exploit the potential of the processor, and b) the lifecycle of the console will probably end before this potential can be reached anyway then c)what's the point? It seems that this technology is just going to drive up the cost of the system with out really giving gamers any of the benefits the processor has the potential to give. Hell, I doubt even XBox 360 developers will have been able to push its so called "weaker" hardware to the max before another generation of consoles is upon us. Do gamers really need all this hardware being thrown at them?
  • I'm quite content with the current battery of games I've accquired. With the not-so-modest amount of time I have at my disposal (between work, classes, and other life-stuff), I've been consumed by World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 2, and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

    I can't add to Sony's coffers because of the DRM scandal. I find it morally reprehensible. Same goes for Apple - whom I've loved dearly for years, and who is due for a cash infusion from my wallet (my AppleCare on the PowerBook just e
  • I'm no market analyst (well, my clients don't know that.. but times can be hard), but this really does look like Sony has dropped the ball this time by trying to innovate too much.

    I've long been a Sony fanboy, but in recent times it seems that Microsoft have finally clicked as to what makes a successful console, and Nintendo are innovating while managing to keep the fun and simple goals in view for their market.

    They should just able to break even with the PS3 in the long run, but I don't forsee a PlayStatio
  • But Will It Run Linux?!? Seriously, the PS2 had a linux add-on available for it. The XBox, well, people just modded that. Can someone Mod the PS3? I have a feeling that it'd be nice to run other things besides games on that platform if it's all it is hyped to be. Properly compiled linux software for it would be quite slick and I'd be willing to say it'd give many other server platforms a run for their money.

    That is if it's ever released...
  • The only think you can know about a Sony release is that anything can change, up to the day it hits the shelves.

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