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PlayStation (Games) E3 Sony

PlayStation 3 Press Conference Tonight 165

Posted by Zonk from the backstage-betties dept.
The official unveiling of the PlayStation 3 is set to happen tonight, with folks such as the Guardian Gamesblog, Kotaku, and GamesAreFun live blogging the event as it happens. From the Guardian post: "The sign on the way into the Sony Press Conference is big - Wi-Fi access will be only available after the event. They lied - a quick wireless search has found me some access and now I'm on. The clock says 1.00pm but my body says 9pm. By the time Microsoft unveils the 360 again tonight I'll be ready for my cornflakes."
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PlayStation 3 Press Conference Tonight More

PlayStation 3 Press Conference Tonight

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  • It's funny how the kotaku's brian got RSVP'd into the press conference, but, Joel from gizmodo got barred from entering [gizmodo.com]. :)

    Oh well, I think engadget [engadget.com]'s a better blog then gizmodo anyway :)

  • This is impressive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UWC ( 664779 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @06:10PM (#12548260)
    Coming over here straight from the XBox 360 topic on down the Games page, the shift in tone is hilarious. The XBox comments were generallly guardedly optimistic or speculative, with a few straight-out anti-MS comments or rants against assumed fanboys.

    So far in this PS3 topic, the base comments are: 1) a prayer for XBox 360's demise, 2) a statement that Sony's bragfest will be "quite a refreshing change from the endless hype" for the 360, and 3) speculation that developers will flock to Sony's 8 Cell vector processors because XBox 360's three PowerPC cores will be too hard to develop for. Oh, and now someone is piping in with typos a-plenty voicing excitement on what will surely be an immensely informative session about this console that is likely at least a year from release.

    Granted, there have been swift and thorough rebuttals to most of these, but they are posted alongside further MS bashing from others. The MTV special will be drawing fire for months, I'm thinking. Because, you know, a hilariously pandering noninformative show intended to appeal to an audience whose intelligence they (hopefully) underestimated certainly has the same exact intent as an event aimed at the gaming media. There was a video released on OurColony the same day that provides much more information about the functionality that I hope they can deliver.

    And before I'm branded as a Microsoft fanboy/apologist/astroturfer, I own all three current consoles and the current crop of portables. I've found reasons to enjoy all of them. XBox 360 is the next-gen console we know most about so far, and some of what we do know is impressive, like the cohesive Internet experience that it seems that the new Live can offer.

    • Re:This is impressive (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 )
      I agree, having read both threads, that the contrast between cheerleaders for each platform is striking.

      Personally, I'm hoping the PS3 is light-years ahead of the XBox360.

      Not because I have anything against the XBox, but because I think the 360 looks like a really nice piece of hardware, and for something to be even better by a large margin, it must really be something special.

      I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

      While I enjoy the games on my current X-Box a lot, I still have not signed up for Live a
      • Granted, its not the cohesive expirence of xbox live, and only system link games are supported, but services like xlink kai can be fun in a pinch. I played forza motorsport on xlink this weekend, and while getting 7 other drivers to race against in the class i wanted too a little bit, once we got together, it was a blast. 8 players, battling head to head on nurburg ring, that was great (too bad my integra didnt have enough ponies to win it down the last straightaway, but still was a refreshing expirence, n
    • You can make excuses for the XBOX special all you want, and many, many people have. Microsoft did not only mean for the XBOX 360 special to be viewed by teenage trend-seekers. They meant it for us too. The "professional gamers" segment is proof. They were trying to reach out to the video game enthusiasts with "hard questions" and "game lingo" from "seasoned gamers."

      They scheduled it before E3 to get people like us to watch. This is what they think will sell to us. Most of the MTV fanbase isn't going to pou

    • Re:This is impressive (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      On the one hand, you have a point. People came down harder on Microsoft than was justified by the quite reasonable specs they announced, with the system setup that looked pretty darned good.

      On the other hand, that special was in many ways just plain insulting. It really gave The Wizard [wikipedia.org] a run for it's money. Lucas would be proud [imdb.com].

      It looks like neither of the two (Sorry Nintendo) major players have slipped up. Both are using sleek 'n sexy wireless controllers that may actually justify the cost of 1st par
  • gamesarefun has been blown out of the water, and kotaku has the ( sarcasm-mode ) shocking news ( end sarcasm ) that the PS3 will be backwards-compatable and feature multimedia capabilities. To their credit, they're both more informative than Guardian Gamesblog, which doesn't seem to have anything new past their first entry.
    I guess I'll wait an hour, then read about the console that I'll be buying in 2007 sometime after the price drops...

    Damn I hate being a news junkie. I really just want to look away and re

  • Specs (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeadlyDonkey ( 881338 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @07:28PM (#12549058)
    Sony also confirmed the PlayStation 3, will use Blu-Ray discs as its media format. The discs can hold up to six times as much data as current-generation DVDs. It will also support CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R formats. It also confirmed the machine would be backward-compatible all the way to the original PlayStation. It will also have slots for Memory Stick Duo, a SD slot, and a compact flash memory slot. It will also sport a slot for a detachable 2.5 inch HDD somewhat similar the Xbox 360's.

    Sexy

    Out of the box, the PS3 will have the capability to support seven Bluetooth controllers. It will also have six USB slots for peripherals--four up front and two in the back. Sony also laid out the technical specs of the device. The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2 Ghz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256mb XDR main RAM at 3.2 Ghz, and have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700mhz.

    Seven controllers?!

    • Re:Specs (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Andy_R ( 114137 )
      Interesting... samne clock and ram size as the Xbox360 (if I recall correctly?) but 2.18 claimed teraflops versus 1.0 for the Xbox. Surprised not to see UMD in the list of supprted formats.

      Where are you getting this info from? The 3 links in the article are unupdated, 1 line of hype and refusing to serve pages respectively, plus engadget and gizmondo are dead too.
      • Where are you getting this info from?

        http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_612 4681.html linked from another post here...

      • The Cell has 8 vector processing units which explains the high FLOPS rating. Unfortunately it has only one all-purpose unit that seems about on par with the cores that Microsoft has three of.

        Am I the only one surprised that there is only one Cell in the PS3? I expected atr least two.
    • "Seven controllers?!"

      PS2 supports 8 controllers using two multitaps. But 7 wireless controllers sounds kind of cool. Speaking of ports, what's the deal with 2 HDMI ports?
    • Finally! A Sony product featuring a viable alternative to Memory Stick! SD and CompactFlash are half the price of MS.

      Ah. Good. There's some hope for them yet.
    • "It will also support CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R formats."

      What no DVD-RAM?
  • Here is a Gamespot link that is being updated frequently tonight: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_61246 81.html [gamespot.com]
  • http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_61246 81.html [gamespot.com]

    mem card slots, 7 bluetooth controllers, 2.18(!) teraflops processing power, 1080p rez

    wowzer..
    • The CPU is 218 GFLOPS, the GPU is supposedly 1.8 TFLOPS. Sony is mixing them together to get the 2 TFLOPS performance.

      And damn you /.ers all to hell for killing my site! ;-P

      Seriously, we (GamesAreFun) went down right after the press conference started, and it took almost 2 hours for our webhost to manually go and hit the reset button...

      Although I am upset to have heard that someone found WiFi access in the Sony conference... I know I sure as hell couldn't connect to the only network inside the stud

  • Full set of PS3 Pics (Score:5, Informative)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @07:56PM (#12549446)
    Full set of PS3 Pics: Playstation 3 Pics [filerushnews.com]

  • Two (!) HDMI Ports! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alzheimers ( 467217 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @08:25PM (#12549726)
    From FirstAdopter.com [firstadopter.com]

    AV Output
    Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
    HDMI: HDMI out x 2
    Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
    Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

    Two HDMI out ports? If the PS3 can drive two displays, that would explain the support for the seven bluetooth controllers. I wonder what kind of performance hit that would mean, at 1080p x2

    PS3: lanparty in a box!

    • lanparty in a box indeed. You don't even need a router. Two PS3s and four displays and 14 players? What ? Are we getting this right?

      We'll all be very curious to see what the price point for this sucker is like...

    • Hmmm. Two ports driving two projectors with polarized film in front of them... put the glasses on and you have 12-foot-high 3-D gaming. :) Sounds good to me.
    • Added bonus is that it seems to support PSP to link with it. So each player has one screen (on PSP) plus two common ones. Seems like it would be possible to do some neat things with this.

      Unfortunately I doubt all that many games will support it all out. Since not many end users will have multiple screens hooked up to it. Most likely it will suffer just like multi-head gaming on the PC has.

      BTW 7 controllers is probably only because Bluetooth per default support 8 devices per pico-net. Of those one is the h

      • It might be able to do what the dreamcast + memory card-with-lcd-screen were supposed to do. The first application that comes to mind is the ability to do things like select which play you want to run in a football game without the defense having a clue what you pick.

        Or a driving game with the speedometer and tach and fuel in the handheld screen.

        Oh, wow.


    • The Anandtech review [anandtech.com] shows a slide where it gives some uses for dual screens - for example, a racing game in complete panorama (32:9 aspect ratio), or a game wherein the main screen is the game, and a secondary screen shows a menu or statistics or something.

      Another thing that the anandtech review shows is that the damn thing can decode 12 fullsize HD streams, simultaneously [anandtech.com], or decode and display 1,000 movies at one time.

      I'm very impressed.

      ~Will

  • Specs reposted from Gamespot (Score:3, Informative)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Monday May 16, 2005 @08:42PM (#12549857) Homepage
    Here is a cut and paste from the Gamespot article:

    Sony also confirmed the PlayStation 3, will use Blu-Ray discs as its media format. The discs can hold up to six times as much data as current-generation DVDs. It will also support CR-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R formats. It also confirmed the machine would be backward-compatible all the way to the original PlayStation. It will also have slots for Memory Stick Duo, a SD slot, and a compact flash memory slot. It will also sport a slot for a detachable 2.5 inch HDD somewhat similar the Xbox 360's.

    Out of the box, the PS3 will have the capability to support seven Bluetooth controllers. It will also have six USB slots for peripherals--four up front and two in the back.

    Sony also laid out the technical specs of the device. The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2 Ghz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256mb XDR main RAM at 3.2 Ghz, and have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700mhz.

    Sony also unveiled the PS3's graphics chip, the RSX "Reality Synthesizer" based on Nvidia technology. The GPU will be capable of 128bit pixel precision, 1080p resolution, some of the highest HD resolution around. The RSX also has 512mb of graphics render memory and is capable of 100 billion shader operations and 51 billion dot products per second. It also has over 300 million transistors, larger than any processor available commercially today. It will be manufactured using the 90nm process with 8 layers of metal. The RSX is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards, which would cost roughly $1000 total if bought today.



    Pretty damned impressive.
  • Is it just me or is the font that says PLAYSTATION 3 [gamesarefun.com] on the side same as the one used for the Spider-Man movie [amazon.com]? The fact that they're both from Sony makes it seem more than just coincidence, even though it probably is.
  • Is anyone else disgusted by the new boomerang controller design? It looks very uncomfortable compared to the Dual Shock -- the D-Pad is slightly angled, and the shoulder buttons are very close together. Granted, I don't know how it feels, but I wonder why Sony changed the design that we've been using for a decade...
    • Maybe that's why Sony used the ad campain "Welcome chang3" to hype the PS3. This controller is a big change. It looks like those cheezy aftermarket controllers that tries to get you to buy it solely based on its K-r4d k3wl l00kz d00d!!!

      What annoys me is that all the next gen consoles we have seen so far have rounded surfaces. I like to put my games and controller on top of my console when I am done with them. With the XBOX 360 my stuff will settle in the center and with the PS3 it will slide right off! I g
    • people call the xbox controller ugly this looks like a deformed boomerang. the i can see it getting changed within a few months of release like the duke did. it just looks mightily uncomfortable, the analouge sticks are still in the wrong place
    • In my opinion the old design was a horrible analouge controller, it was a great digital pad, buy they stuck ananlouge on in a half-assed way.

      This new boomerang continues with the stupidness, it looks a bit more ergonomic than the old dual shock, but they still have the left hand analouge stick in the secondary position. Sony still don't seem to have realised that for most games nowadays, it would be useful the have the left hand analouge stick in the upper position.

      I suppose with backwards compatability t
  • However, Sweeney's words were only the beginning. Later, Sony trotted out a whole host of publishers that are backing the PlayStation 3. And in the process, it confirmed several games for the console. Hideo Kojima introduced Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4, Capcom showed off Devil May Cry 4, Namco unveiled Tekken 6, Polyphony Digital trotted out a fifth Gran Turismo, SCEE showed off the next Killzone, and Rockstar Games mentioned that a Grand Theft Auto would be released for the console. [gamespot.com] Wow, lo
    • I'm sure there will be plenty of new games, but at a press conference, when you first unveil the console, they probably wanted to make sure no one thinks everyones just developing for the xbox. So, showing off all the games everyone knows shows that they haven't lost touch. But I sure hope the next Killzone is better than the current one *sigh*
    • Kind of logical considering the relatively short development time (The Unreal team had the dev.boxes for just two months). Sequals are just easiest to push out since much of the foundation work has already been done.
    • You might have a point if the other consoles were any DIFFERENT.
  • From here [reuters.com], the PS3 looks like the most high tech George Foreman Grill in history.
  • Is it just me or do they have better spinsters than engineers over at Sony Computer Entertainment?

    I'm sorry for the trollish opening, but the thing that really chafes my balls about the hype surrounding the Playstation3 can be boiled down to this:

    The PS2 was purported to have "Hollywood-style" graphics capabilities.

    Anyone remember the line about the PS2 being able to render Toy Story in real-time? I do - it was such a boldfaced lie. Dreamcast had better graphics than the second-gen Playstation. and it wa
  • I can't believe no one has pointed out the obvious that this pretty much cements Blu-Ray as the next generation DVD standard (I know this has been stated in previous /. posts about the PS3 though). This will get BluRay into millions of homes and then Toshiba won't be able to compete. This is a good thing. BluRay is much better than HD-DVD and will have a longer life-cycle.
    • sony and toshiba have teamed up to make the next gen dvd a hybrid of the two. blu-ray on the hardware side and HD-DVD on the software side. i think it was posted here, if not google it.
      • That's not true, Toshiba recently said unification talks between BD and HD were "a waste of time" and that nothing has come from them yet.

        http://www.i4u.com/article3416.html [i4u.com] is a link that describes how no unification progress was made. The initial claim that there was a successful unification were exaggerated it seems.
  • http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=5833&typ e=mov [gametrailers.com] - kill zone, on the ps3, in-game/real-time apparently

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