PlayStation 3 To Debut at E3 2005

Yorrike writes "According to the BBC, Sony are planning to officially reveal the PlayStation 3 at the E3 Expo in May 2005. They're obviously not wanting to be outdone by Nintendo, who announced the same plans for the GameCube successor, as well as Xbox 2's rumored debut around that time. Looks like E3 2005 is going to be a biggy." Worth noting that's not the ship date, but when people will see it.

I'm beginning to have my doubts...

...after they renamed the project Playstation Forever.

yay.. more linux porting

haha... time to port linux to the next generation Xbox :b

Too late

Microsoft is going to win these wars. Their smooth integration of online technologies and their ability to give the developer a single API to develop to (Xbox AND desktop windows via DirectX) is going to win out eventually. Its only a matter of time.

Re:Too late

The best technology does not always win. OS/2, The Amiga , The Atari ST, and the Mac would have killed Microsoft back at MS-DOS 4.
What matter for consoles is Games. Are they fun. From what I hear from my game nut friends. The PS/2 has the best games followed by the Gamecube. XBox has Halo.
The Single API might also not be an Advantage for the XBox. If every game that I can get on the XBox. To make such a bold claim sight unseen is foolish at best.

Re:Too late

There are two rather large assumptions here.
1) The console gaming market wants to be like the PC gaming market, or vice versa.
2) Someone will actually develop for the Xbox.

The former is only obvious if you've actually followed the two realms. What makes a good PC game does not necessarily make a good console game, and what makes a popular PC game does not necessarily make a popular console game. It's not just the difference in how you control them, but also a difference in what sorts of games you tend to see. Console RPGs and PC RPGs have diverged quite a bit, for example. So the idea of having a single API for PC and console isn't as huge of an advantage as you'd think, simply because the two groups aren't all that alike, and I daresay won't be all that alike for awhile.

The second is probably a non-issue. Even if Microsoft can't get a dead monkey to develop for Xbox, they have enough cash to keep cranking out new generations for quite some time, or to buy out developers as exclusives (see: Rare).

Oh fun

So we're what two years away from another FF game, another DDR series with erm.. better graphics?

Nah, I don't think I'll bother with the PS3, it won't be hugely different to the PS2 and well I'd rather support someone like Nintendo who can make a console which doesn't die after a year (I'm sure everyone has seen or heard of a bad PS2 like that).

Sony can make fine TVs, DVDs, VHS and whatever else you wish to name. But the PS systems after the first just need alot of work.. we're on what the 10th model now and they still don't run right...

Re:Oh fun

So we're what two years away from another FF game, another DDR series with erm.. better graphics? I understand if you have a problem with PS2s breaking down, but if you buy the next Nintendo console and don't expect the big games to be MarioX, ZeldaX, and MetroidX you're fooling yourself.

Re:Oh fun

I'll just do the same thing I did with this generation of consoles:

1) Buy games for previous generation console dirt cheap when new console is released.

2) Wait for new console to have 3 or more games that I must have.

3) Buy the new console and the 3 or more games.

4) Repeat.

Gee, I wonder why I have 4 consoles and am considering buying a PSOne for the PS1 games I own that won't play on the PS2. This is what taught me:

5) Don't sell the old system until I've tested every single game I already have on the new system (if the new system makes any claims of backwards compatability).

I can buy switches to handle as many consoles as I could possibly collect. I can buy ports (or sequels that manage to replace the games they follow) to reduce my need for older consoles. When I don't play a console very much I can even box it up and store it in a closet until I just need to play that game. I can't get my old games and systems back if I sell them, though, and I see no reason not to preserve these old games for my daughter should she ever show any interest in retro gaming later in her life (though by then she may just be able to zap them all into some VR rig for pennies a ROM).

Re:Oh fun

Well, I know 3 people with PS2s that ended up not working, and it has nothing to do with modding. It has to do with watching dvds on them. The damn lasers in the PS2 are worthless, the new models are better, but the old ones are horrible. First gen PS2 was a huge pile of crap in a lot of ways (it was noisy and the laser sucked to name a few). After a while, these PS2s quit loading DVD based PS2 games and DVD movies. The still seem to load CD based (blue backed games) without issue in most cases, even though the laser is extremely noisy when loading blue games. Enough evidence for you? Don't get me wrong - I own a PS2, and will also own a PS3. Why? Backwards compatibility. Xbox won't have it, Nintendo never has it, so PS3 it is.

Ars Technica

claims that Nintendo will not be showcasing its nextgen unit next E3. It will just be discussing its "vision" for its nextgen unit.

I couldn't find links showing official info either way. Who's right?

Re:Ars Technica

"I couldn't find links showing official info either way."

You must be new to E3. Companies often don't have a set plan until a few weeks before the show. Even price changes are often laid down spur of the moment (although people at the company generally have some idea what price they will go to, they often wait for a competitor to ante up first). Considering demos are often burned the night before the show, and hardware that arrives with a curtain sometimes stays that way (Google both), I'm not surprised there's no official info.

New Gamecube?

I thought Nintendo was going the same route as Sega which was not to release any more consols? What is the status on Nintendo's next gen as well. Anyone have any good rumor sites?

GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community

Re:New Gamecube?

Nintendo is alive and well. They are keeping the specs of the Revolution close to their heart for the time being. (although there are rumors to the effect of a dual processor G5, or something like that... but I personally think those are bogus). Reports of Nintendo's death were greatly exaggerated.

Nintendo seems to have something up their sleeve though. They are talking about it like they were before they announced the DS. I am expecting something very strange that will have people going WTF.

I am also curious how the next Gameboy is going to factor into this. It seems to me that the DS is the perfect complement to a console, connectivity-wise but I am sure Nintendo will try to leverage the Gameboy more... Not sure how that will pan out.

For Nintendo console news, check out these sites:
www.planetgamecube.com
www.gcadvanced.com
www.gametabs.com

Re:New Gamecube?

I thought Nintendo was going the same route as Sega which was not to release any more consols?

A while back, Nintendo's Satoru Iwata declared, "When we withdraw from the home game console, that's when we withdraw from the video game business." [slashdot.org]

Re:New Gamecube?

"I thought Nintendo was going the same route as Sega which was not to release any more consols?"

Somehow I doubt you heard that from a news site. Ever since the Playstation came out, everybody's tried to be the first to pass off a prediction of Nintendo's death as a sign of intelligence.

Sega scrapped the DC when they scraped broke. Nintendo has several billion cold hard cash in the bank. This fall/winter/next spring they're releasing the Nintendo DS, which sounds pretty darned cool so far. Nintendo's 'Revolution' system is another year or two away. It's supposed to be really snazzy. Not so much in terms of processor specs, but something's supposed to be revolutionary about it. After seeing the DS, I think Nintendo will pull it off.

Also the Jaguar 2

Atari will also return to form with their new 128-bit Jaguar 2 & Jaguar 2 CD, now more toilet-like [vidgame.net] than ever!

Development?

I was wondering how to contact them about doing some development for it. I've got this really neat ray tracer that should be fantastic on all those processors....

Well, they're on track...

They said it was going to be like 2064 before the PS9 was coming out right? That's what the TV ads from 3 years ago told me. That and the (PS9) console was an implant... Seriously, I'm disappointed that no console outside of the portables has tried an innovation pushing on how we play games. All these consoles for the last 20 years have been tied to a TV. Only the GB/A/SP, The Nomad, and Virtual Boy have tried to innovate in these areas. I'd seriously consider buying a console that made some intelligent use of the 3D computer montior technology that's out on PC. Console manufacturers are too reticent to try something like this, but that'd be a true innovation over the current generation, without a loss on graphic capabilities.

Does it still run on love?

I remember seeing a preview interview [66.102.7.104] of the Playstation 3 a few years ago.

Sony: Dreamcast? Ha ha, funny stupid yankee! You dishonor me with your mention of this Dreamcast. The Praystation 3 does not connect to internet, Praystation 3 CONTAIN the internet. You prugga in the computer to the port, the internet isa all there. We copy it inside machine for fast access.

mis: Wait, so you're saying that you copied every single file on the internet into this box? That doesn't even make any sense! The internet is a constantly changing network of millions of individual machines. How does the PS3 update its so called "internet" if it has no connections to the real network?

Sony: Thasa right. No connections. Praystation 3 get internet from outerspace.

mis: And its power?

Sony: It run on love.

Too fast...

I was just planning on buying a ps2! Now they're releasing the 3? Why can't they just make a small chip we can buy to upgrade the console? Soon the game companies wont be able to keep up ...

Rambus scuttlebutt?

I never bought a Playstation 2 because I didn't want to support the thieves at Rambus by buying their memory. Any word on whether they've replaced that vendor for PS3? I think I've beaten "Gauntlet Legends Dreamcast" one time too many by now...

Re:Rambus scuttlebutt?

Fraid not brother,as PS3 will use RAMBUS memory.
http://www.ps3insider.com/modules.php?nam e=News&fi le=article&sid=122
(XDR on Schedule for Mid-2005)

Re:Rambus scuttlebutt?

Looks like your boycott was a huge success!

Only 70 million PS2 boxes was sold! Way to go!

The Gamecube successor...

...the Ninentendo GameHyperCube? For all your 4D tesseract gameplaying needs?

I would use a different term...

...Sony are planning to officially reveal the PlayStation 3 at the E3 Expo in May 2005. They're obviously not wanting to be outdone by Nintendo, who announced the same plans for the GameCube successor, as well as Xbox 2's rumored debut around that time. Looks like E3 2005 is going to be a biggy.

Hmmm... All that new hardware. I suspect that it's more likely that E3 2005 is going to be a buggy...

Could be a crapfest

Seems to be a rush to be the first and the big question is what features and quality reviews will be skipped to accomplish this feat? Plus, depending on the offering, one of those 3 seems doomed (from current momentum it seems to be Nintendo). PS3 seems to be the world fave, but the 'X' is huge in the USA, so only the backward-compatible question would cripple the successor's debut. ... Still slobberin' for Halo2

Re:Could be a crapfest

Based on worldwide numbers, if one of them is doomed its the Xbox. Remember that gaming is a much bigger inustry in Asia than in US, and gamecube kills it there.

Misleading, it's sooner than that

News from Dengeki including a powerpoint slide from the actual presentation:
link [dengekionline.com]

Sony is planning on announcing its new system before the end of (FY) 2004, and unveiling a playable prototype at E3. Looking forward to it!

Good for the marketplace?

I was a wee lad when the early console wars happened (8-bit, handheld, and 16-bit), and didn't give a toss about anything but the NES system. After a time I grew older and missed the most recent wars. However, now that I have some time to indulge in gameplay, it's become increasingly irrtating to keep up. Is this massive turnover killing the industry? I realize that it has been quite a while since the PS2, GC, and XBox came out, but they only recently seem to have acquired widespread acceptance. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems that unless each company plans on making their new consoles backwards compatible they are setting themselves up for a huge fall in this mad race to get the latest greatest technology out the door. To mee it seems that gameplay is the greatest draw, and technology is secondary. As far as gameplay goes, no one can touch Nintendo (although they tend to lean far to heavily on their franchises), but perhaps I am biased. There is something to be said for developer apis as companies are more inclined to develop for a platform that allows them to create and distribute games with the least amount of overhead... and it seems that M$ wins in that arena.
-m

Re:Good for the marketplace?

I would like to believe that gameplay is the #1 draw, but the sad fact is graphics are pushed over gameplay. Look at a lot of Xbox games. So many of them have terrific graphics with bad gameplay. Sony has even gone as far as to not give the greenlight to 2D games because they "aren't as pretty" as 3D games. Nintendo seems to be the only one to push gameplay over graphics, but their gameplay idea is for everyone to be able to pick up and play it, which sometimes draws the more hardcore gamers away from them.

Maybe i'm a consumer whore, BUT:

I'll be preordering or whatever a PS3 as soon as EB starts allowing it.

Logically, I know a Final Fantasy game will come out for the PS3, and I will buy the PS3 then, so why deny myself 6-20 months of extra enjoyment? ;)

Real question...

As the article blurb pointed out, the real question is more "when will they ship?"

I'm in the market for a new console, since my bastard apartment mate took the common DVD player when he left for the summer. That, and I'm getting married in the near future, and neither my fiance nor I own a stand-alone DVD player.

We're planning on buying an HDTV of some sort, but we're unsure what console we should get. We're DDR fans, but that doesn't really separate the pack, since both consoles have DDR. I _am_ a big RPG fan, though, and Final Fantasy is definitely a consideration. Therefore, I'm leaning towards a PS2, but if X-Box is amazingly better at playing DVDs or has better HDTV support, I might go for that instead.

Obviously, GC is off the table since it doesn't play DVDs.

Any opinions from people who have owned _and_ used both?

Another question: are there any rumored release dates for PS3 that seem remotely believable?

-Erwos

News Update? March 2005 release date

Well, now the news is that the timeline has been accelerated [yahoo.com].

They're saying that the PS3 is coming out in March 2005.

If confirmed, that timeline would mean Sony's new game console will be out before the E3 convention in Los Angeles, scheduled for May. Sony and other video game makers have used E3, which draws game developers, fans and industry officials, for major product launches.

If this isn't accurate, I'm sure it will be corrected here shortly.

XBox Response

And in related news, rumors are that Microsoft may introduce XBox2 at the X04 trade show in September 2004 [eurogamer.net], with their launch in October 2005.

We need better games, not better consoles

The current consoles are more than powerful enough already. We need better games, not better consoles. All this focus on newer fancier (and more expensive) hardware is misplaced effort. It's just going to turn the video game industry into the same mess that the PC industry has been for years: perpetual upgrade cycle with no time for developers to make software that truly utilizes the current generation of capabilities well.

Re:HDTV

But most people aren't going to upgrade to HDTV sets over the next five years. Well-off home theater geeks will, but not most others.

Even if HDTV set prices drop to the same price as today's non-HDTV sets, there's not enough incentive (in most people's minds) to purchase one. Okay, the picture is a little sharper. To tech heads this may be a big deal, but to most people it's a minor improvement. Certainly not enough of an improvement to justify throwing $500 or more at a new TV when your current one still works fine. Plus you have to then sign up for something more (expensive) than analog cable service to actually see anything in HDTV.

I predict HDTV won't really take hold for about 15 years, because that's probably about how long, on average, today's non-HDTV sets will last before dying and needing replacement. Replacing a dead TV is the biggest incentive most people have for buying something better at similar prices.

My GameCube is a Doorstop.

The thing is useless. My Gamecube is sitting in limbo on my shelf. PS3 should finally kill of nintendo once and for all. I simply dont see Nintendo changing their ways. Afterall look at their new lame dual screened handheld system. It looks slapped together and dated.

Then look at Sony's handheld offering. The PSP is sleak, incredible games etc.

I think at E3 2006, Nintendo will be annoucing their own death.

Nintendo Nintendo Revolution

It'll probably play DVD Video and come with a universal cartridge adapter. Nintendo will claim universal compatibility with all Nintendo console titles.

Then Nintendo will fuck it up, right on schedule:

Nintendo hardware design team will somehow manage to make the console look like yet another cheap toy. Packaging team, eager to leave GCN handle debacle behind them, will suggest shipping the console to retailers in a commemorative bookbag with Pokemon all over it.

Some designer on his lunch break will manage to relocate the Z button directly on the left circular edge of the analog stick and shrink the d-pad by another 50%. The d-pad is laid out such that you have to flip the controller over and rotate it at a 45 degree angle even have access to the d-pad. Since Nintendo invented the d-pad, his co-workers do not question him.

Console shipping color will be purple, pink, or bright orange, and it will not have any Certified-Badass blue status LEDs. Don't worry: true to Nintendo form, the only accessories available in your local EB will be colored differently than your console.

System's flash memory cards/drives will be 16 times too small. Nintendo will bitch about how developers are getting too lazy, and how they should strive to fit 20 encyclopedias worth of data in 3 memory blocks. (will not be remedied until 4 years after console launch.) Sony takes note and evolves PS3's units of storage from "kilobytes" to "encyclopedias".

Sony will outbid Nintendo for exclusive "GTA4" to be released at PS3 launch, and no Mario game will be ready at 'Revolution' launch. To make up for it, Nintendo releases four games that are only 25% fun.

Console will have 8+ ports on the bottom that will never be used for anything, just so you know it's a Nintendo system. Will be left unlabeled, since "SP" acronym was already taken for something other than "Speculation Ports". Fucking idiots will lose port covers, causing console to sit unbalanced. Nintendo, sensing a new market for mismatched-colored accessories, starts selling replacement port covers.

Network adapter not integrated and no wireless connectivity except to the portable Dual Boy (which was released two years ago at Christmas). Simplicity-oriented Nintendo will hand the plug-and-play Internet gaming market to Sony and Microsoft on a silver platter.

Third parties, already scared away during the N64 and GCN iterations, go with Sony.

Nintendo will ship Ultra Mario Bros. a whole 8 months after system launch, which just happens to be in May, a nice safe 6 to 7 months away from the lucrative Christmas shopping season.

Ultra Mario Bros. will have some stupid goddamned gimmick, like Mario wearing (oh, I don't know..) toasters instead of shoes. He won't punch blocks or collect coins, though. God forbid he should punch blocks or collect fucking coins. Nobody born prior to 1993 will like the game, and everyone will bitch.

Similar bullshit happens with the next Zelda pre-post-post-pre-post-prequel. Oh, by the way, Link's a kid in this one again. And get this, he's got a musical instrument. There's an option available to turn off cel-shading, but only if you beat the game twice on the same save.

Miyamoto will surface from his underground bunker 3 weeks later to insist that the players are wrong and that Nintendo's new batch of artists and programmers are innovators and that toaster shoes improve gameplay and that Link was always a kid. Suddenly, noticing the Mushroom Signal in the skies high over Kyoto, he hurriedly leaves in order to urgently not-supervise the next Mario game.

Dual Boy SP will be released 3 years and 1 month (December 26th) after complaints surface about the screens on the original Dual Boy acting as a black hole. Upon finding that shining light from both screens cancels out any external light, thereby darkening the space around it and making it impossible to see much less play, Nintendo proudly proclaims that, hey, it worked in R&D!

Jak

A Biggy?

Looks like E3 2005 is going to be a biggy.

Not really. Can you name one title from any of this generation's launch titles that was great, save perhaps Halo? There aren't any, or they're few in number, because the end of a hardware cycle is a thin time for software. If anything, E3 2003/2004 were the best conferences for gamers. Developers have mastered each system's nuances and have reached a plateau in graphics and started to focus more on gameplay. Games released now are refined, honed. Games released for the new systems will be choppy, rushed, and extremely rough around the edges, and in some cases little more than graphical show off stunts.

The changing of the guard is a purgatory for developers. Games released on older systems will be expected to have lower prices, and therefore will result in lower profits. On the other side of the fence, gamers will have just spent $300 on a new system, not including money towards needed periphereals or forced bundles. In the least, that's six games that they could have bought otherwise. What's more is that it will incite rabid fanboyism in the press, and we'll see a barrage of articles over-evaluating the systems. ("The Xbox2 has 8 vertices to it. The PS3 also has 8 vertices to it. EVALUATION: Corners are great to a system, and always add to the stackability. They're keeping with the console tradition of not using pyramids or spherical shapes. WINNER: Tie.")

If anything, E3 2005 will be a great year for PC gamers if only because the engines (Doom 3 & Half Life 2), which are the PC industry's equivalent to consoles and follow a similar cyclical pattern, will have been released and leased out to developers.

But yeah, I guess if you're excited about seeing graphical demos or launch titles that will never actually see the light of day on the new systems, or will look dated within six months of the system's release, sure. E3 2005 will be a biggy. Have fun at E3'05. Go get your hard on. Hardware on, that is.

Devlopment cycle

Wasn't it the ushering in of the last generation that offcially established a targeted 5 year cycle between console generations?

I'm just having trouble finding this information surprising because I think we've all always anticipated five years between generations and now it looks like they'll be right ons chedule. If they demo at E3, the ship date is probably holiday season 2005, which is right five years.

Nintendo, Sony, and MS have all been acting like this is some huge leap forward because of competition I'm betting that's just more publicity, I think they have planned all along on five years. (I'll give nintendo a little slack I guess, since I believe they introdcued their last sytem a little later than anyone else.)

Cell = hype

How can you honestly say your building better technology for a gaming system than what's on expensive desktops or servers ?

Remember all the sony hype about their 'emotion' engine. It's not much different than a good desktop of that time .

ATI demo's [atitech.ca]

Will it look like these ?

Console Wars and people's opinions

I love Slashdot. Its the same as every other gaming forum out there. X sucks. Y rocks. Z outsells X and Y, although I have no reference to back that up.

Face it, if you're reading this forum you're probably (but maybe not) a fairly serious gamer. So if you are truly into your gaming, what does that really mean?

You are going to buy whatever console, whatever system, whatever game is what you want to play.

Some people play for gameplay. Others for graphics. Others for storyline, human interaction (i.e. MMORPG), whatever. Me, I play for a combination of storyline and graphics. (In other words, I'm a FF fan).

Why must people insist that some particular hardware will fail and others will succeed? Before the DreamCast came out, who thought it would fail? How can anyone really know what system is "better"?

Here are some games that I think are really awesome: Zelda, Full Spectrum Warrior, Disgaea. Well, they are all on different systems! So how can I say which system is better?

This is news?

>Looks like E3 2005 is going to be a biggy

Let me get this straight -- Slashdot is announcing that the BBC has announced that Sony has announced that it will be making an announcement at an industry tradeshow in May 2005... and this is something I should get excited about?

satisfying gameplay vs. attention to graphics?

This is in no way mean to be inflammatory. I have a PS2 and an 8-bit Nintendo. I find myself having a lot more fun playing some of the old school Nintendo games, and it's not just nostalgia. A lot of people I know (nerds who also play a lot of console games) feel the same way. I think that games for the recent systems have devolved, at least in terms of the means by which they engage the player with an interesting story and puzzles that don't rely on how fast you can push a sequence of buttons within a given interval of time. Obviously the gameplay for an old school sidescroller is going to be vastly different from a complex 3d rendered PS2 game, but gameplay aside, I wish that developers would spend more time on making the games fun to play and less time on making scantily-clad women who look like omg real girls. There was a paradigm shift at some point, I don't know when, and from my perspective, gameplay suddenly became harder to for developers to make well than did graphics. Basically, I'd be happy with the current systems, if only they could make some fun games for them.

LAN-gamers

It seems to me that a HUGE market to conquer would be the LAN-gamers.

Imaine a device, tailored to solve all your LAN-gaming whoes.

To list a few:

Moving a big heavy box around.
Moving a big heavy monitor around.
Getting all drivers to work.
Getting bullied for having the slowest cpu/gpu/ram/rat whatever.
Trying to convince your friends that it can be fun playing a game that actually runs on Linux too!
Makeing shure everyone has the right patches, crackz and stuff.

What I see before me is a compact, silent box that support two gamers with headsets or some laptop lookalike as interface.
Theese boxes can be clustred to support more gamers. And the whole cluster can be connected to the internet for online gaming.
VoIP is a must.

its called linuXbox

Its called linuXbox as people on freenode are hackin xbox to linuXbox

Oh yeah?

Slashdot's going to cripple the BBC?

Re:Text (We know what's gonna happen to their serv

Don't they mean 70 million PS2 units SHIPPED, and not sold?

In other news, Nintendo describes Sony's marketting division as a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes.

(sorry, had to.)

Slashdot the BBC?

Sir, I think you're overreacting a little! May I suggest the Beeb links to /. to see this site grind to a halt?

Re::P

"SOUTHFIELD, MIBored with scaring elderly misers, the Ghost of Christmas Future is spending the holiday season taunting modern children with visions of Christmas 2016's hottest toy: the Sony PlayStation 5, a 2,048-bit console featuring a 45-Ghz trinary processor, CineReal graphics booster with 2-gig biotexturing, and an RSP connector for 360-degree online-immersion play."
now if i just had the time to play one

Re::P

Okay, so the Onion [theonion.com] has a pay service required for old articles, couldn't you do a google search?

[T]he Ghost of Christmas Future is spending the holiday season taunting modern children with visions of Christmas 2016's hottest toy: the Sony PlayStation 5, a 2,048-bit console featuring a 45-Ghz trinary processor, CineReal graphics booster with 2-gig biotexturing, and an RSP connector for 360-degree online-immersion play.

"You know how kids are--a year is an eternity to them," the wraithlike specter said Monday during a visit to the Southfield home of 13-year-old Josh Kuehn. "So just imagine showing them something they'll have to wait 14 years for. Teasing them with a glimpse of the PS5 is the ultimate torture. They absolutely lose their minds. It's like saying, 'Hey, kid, you'll be an old man before you ever get to touch this.'"...
"I like to appear in the living room with a PS5 hooked up to 2016's most popular TV, the 4'x8' Hi-Def Sony Titania," the Ghost said. "Then, I'll say in my best spooky voice, 'Jimmy! Behold what your kids will be playing while you're slaving away at an office job to support them!'"...
The Ghost said he then likes to show Airsledz, a racing game in which jet-powered sleds whoosh through a four-dimensional racing course in the sky. The game, he said, enables the player to compete online against dozens of other players all around the world.
"They always ask if you can play it on the Internet--it's so cute how they still call it 'the Internet'--and I tell them, 'Hey, you can play this against 63 other PS5 owners simultaneously. At least you can in 14 years,'" the Ghost said. "And you should see their jaws hit the floor when they learn about the add-on accessories that enable users to actually fly around the room during gameplay."

Re::P

Ghost Of Christmas Future

No, it was the Robotic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future.

Or the robotic turkey, I can never remember...

Re:IS!

Actually, in the rest of the English speaking world, groups such as Sony are considered plural. Thus, the original poster was correct.

It makes sense to me, even as an American. I find myself using both ways.

Re:"According to the BBC"

Who cares? I rarely read the articles.. I come to slashdot for the discussion.. you dont get that reading a newspaper.

Re:IS!

Sony are the agglomeration of the several Son* companies.

Re:OMG!!!

Anyone who even remotely follows video games should be expecting all three companies to have showings of the new consoles at E3 next year.
Showings of anything would be good. With the exception of the Nintendo DS E3 2004 was not worth attending.