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Games Entertainment

Playstation 2 Pix and Rollout 308

Posted by Hemos from the even-better-tekken dept.
Lekkim writes "Gaming Age Online has posted the first official picture of the upcoming next-gen playstation2 (its the official name...Apparently it has DVD capabilities and it looks pretty cool. Details are here. " Thanks to Mattrad for the European playstation links as well. It will ship in Japan on March 4, 2000 with an estimated cost of 370$US.
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Playstation 2 Pix and Rollout More

Playstation 2 Pix and Rollout

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  • It is, definitly not attractive at all. It's way too square, and the ridges in the front look horrible. The logo is pretty stupid looking too. This thing would definitly not win a beauty contest.
  • 32Mb RAM for the latest-and-greatest?

    On a related note, Nintendo recently annonced their manufacturor of their RAM. I don't know much about it, except it's supposed to be incredibly fast. The story is here. [next-generation.com]
  • Current owners of PSX's (many millions of people) who remain loyal to the platform will upgrade

    You can't always count on that, all of those PSX owners couldn't have bought a Sony before, since there was none to buy, which means they either are new, came from Sega, or came from Nintendo. So Sony could lose some too if the Dolphin proves as good as it should be.

    $360 is *NOT* expensive, especially if you put a keyboard/model on this thing for an addition $100, you've got a computer which blows the living hell out of the cheapest comparable PCs you can buy.

    Why, are they going to make a word processing, graphics editing, or FTP emulator on this thing? Sure, if you just play games by all means get a PS2 or Dolphin, but this will not take over PC's because it is a limited use function. I don't see any business software on the PS2 lineup.

  • Yes, you can connect to the internet via Sonic. I don't think you play against each other, but you can d/l stuff (or something like that) and post scores. I'm not totally sure because I don't own one yet, but I'm just basing that off what my friends have said.
  • The Atari 2600 was black (well, mostly). While it did have its share of failed games, overall it was a successful console.
  • It will be an add-on.
  • $370 US. That's a lot of money for a game system. Can you think of any other game systems for that much that survived?

    Well, I believe the Atari 2600 was up there when it came out (at least $300 if I remember). And with inflation added into the picture, it almost certainly was over $370.

    What people forget about new consoles is that prices have stayed about the same (or gone down) since the early 80's, and inflation has gone up. This is why that Dreamcast you baught really is a steal at $199, and why that Nintendo you baught in '85 with ROB the robot acctually cost you more than the PS2 will.
  • Heh, we've got an Odessy somewhere down in our basement. I think it still works. Maybe I'll hafta get it out sometime and see if it still works.
  • You're wrong : ) Story here [gaming-age.com] tells all about the networking cababilities. Heck, I won't even make you click, just read:

    .....In addition to packaged media, and recognizing the potential of broadband networks to offer the consumer a vast selection of content and the convenience of download capability, Sony Computer Entertainment will establish broadband based distribution of digital content, beginning with the PlayStation and PlayStation2 software libraries. With an Ethernet connection to a broadband network such as digital cable, PlayStation2 users will be able to download data-intensive computer entertainment content to hard-disc drives to be provided by Sony Computer Entertainment.

    Sony Computer Entertainment will develop an electronic transaction system, including authentication and encryption technology, to support the e-distribution system. The company will also include in 2001 a PlayStation2 expansion module as a network adapter (PC card interface) and establish an e-distribution server.
  • Um. No. Try rereading what I wrote originally. Driving games don't work too well without analogue brake and acceleration.

    The best that the current dual shock controllers can offer is steering on one stick, and an analogue brake/accelerator on the other. But occasionally you want to use the brake and accelerator together, which just isn't possible without analogue buttons (or pedals).
  • Sony's reportedly leaving the dual-focusing laser out of the PSX2 so as to avoid setting it up to compete directly with their home theater components. This means that the PSX2 will not play dual-layered discs. So just don't get too excited to play your new Titanic, The Mummy, The Matrix, Terminator 2, the future Star Wars, or any other DVD that has two layers (aka RSDL).

    It won't replace your DVD player, but it will allow game designers to add some interesting storyline components. And Mark Hammill will be able to find work again (Wing Commander IV, anyone :)

    -Dodja
  • With a rumored price point of around $150, and possibly having a Mario game (what's so bad about Mario anyway?) and a Metroid game, Nintendo will most likely have a good launch.
  • The proof is that:
    A. It's on every single major videogame website
    B. It's on Sony of Japan's site [scei.co.jp]
  • That "disc like" thing will be DVD.
  • I thought N64 was charcoal gray, and as a result had almost failed and was still underselling in most markets worldwide.
  • It only plays single-layered discs, which rules out most of the cool DVDs that are on the market today. So in effect, it's hardly a DVD player at all.

    -dodja
  • Indeed...NeoGeo, 3DO, Genesis [didnt fail but didn't reach a freaction of the success of the SNES], TurboGrafx, Jaguar, Sega Master System, and Atari 7600 to add some more to the list...
    What color were the NES, SNES, and PSX? Hmm?
  • I agree. I like my N64 better simply because it has the games I like to play. I don't like RPG's, so I could care less that FF MXXVIII is coming out for the PS2. (BTW, if it's Final Fantasy, how can they have more than one, wouldn't the first one be "final" :-)). I'll take all those Mario games (Mario 64, Mario Kart, Mario Golf, SSB, etc) anyday. And with Rare as a Nintendo only developer, I'm definitly getting a Dolphin at least.
  • Yea, it's so fake, someone cracked both Sony of Japan's [scei.co.jp] and Sony of Europe [playstation-europe.com] and Sony of America [playstation.com] and planted all those pictures and stories.

    The links that are in the article arent' the only ones that have news about it you know, try to do some checking before you automatically assume it to be false.
  • I beg to differ. The winner for the "Looks like a bathroom appliance" award goes to the Ottoman PC [news.com] while the iBook [akamaitech.net] gets runner-up.

    However, the thing does indeed look funny. It could be the possible love-child of a HP 712/60 [lublin.pl] and a component CD player [sony.com].

  • 5200 (right after Colecovision)
    7800 (after? NES)
    Jaguar (after 3DO)
  • I think you'll find that there was a fairly wide selection of game styles for the original Playstation, including (here comes the better term for Zelda-style RPGs) ARPGs like Alundra (which I found far more fun than Zelda64, although I understand that it's heretical to prefer 2D sprites to 3D rendered loveliness).

    Genuine old-school game fans who liked the real Mario and Zelda games (before they went all 3D and icky) are pretty much an endangered species now, and not even Nintendo care about them. They live on the fringes of gaming society, lurking around the emulation sites and running screaming from 3D fighters and plumbers.

    [sigh]. I knew it was all going to go wrong when I heard they were making a 3D version of Lemmings...
  • $370 is alot for a console--no matter how awesome. Didnt the Sega Genesis have the same problem: it cost too much to be an impulse buy, and is hard to justify when you budget for the month?

  • The playstation was never known for it's reliability - many of the CD units broke down quite quickly. Having a new unit prolongs the life of your playstation games considerably.

    Also, having the new console able to play the old games means that people can try and sell their old console (probably with a couple of the game they're not so fond of) You can bet that a lot of people will figure the price they'd get from selling their console against buying a new one. Of course, with the huge amount of secondhand PSX units that will suddenly flood the market, I don't suppose they'd get much for them...

    Another point is that if you have to keep your old console around, that's abother set of power plugs, video cables etc that clutters up your living room floor...

    cheers,

    Tim
  • How is an AC who signs his name at the bottom of his messages (but doesn't actually have a slashdot account) any less worthy of attention than somebody such as yourself, who has a slashdot account, but is every bit as anonymous as that AC?
  • The controller they're pushing with the system is the exact same one available for the Playstation right now. I love that controller dearly, but there's always room for improvement. It seems like if you going to put out a next generation console system, you should update the controller, too.

    Not to mention that it's MSRP is 370 US dollars. Apparently Sony is planning to lose the console wars considering the Dreamcast's price tag is 199 and Nintendo is shooting for 99 dollars on their next generation system.


  • Hmm... seems to me that with USB, Firewire, and especially a PCMCIA slot, there's no lack of orifices on this device from which to extract a real-world connection. Decently fast PCMCIA modems and ethernet cards are fairly cheap, and you're not limited to one type of media, as is the case with the Dreamcast at the moment. My roomate is getting a Dreamcast today, and the lack of an ethernet interface will make using it over our cable modem near-impossible (save a modem serving PPP on another machine plus a loop simulator).
  • Yes, but the fact that it will play DVDs, and be backwards compatible will all your old games (and by the looks of it, peripherals too) is going to take a lot of the hurt out of the high price.

    Plus, like all consoles, you can expect a constant drop in price over time.
  • Yeah.

    My mistake. That'll teach me to not do my research before I start spewing pseudo-facts.

    Sean

  • Also, the fact that they apparently won't try to improve PSX games being emulated (like, why don't they improve the color blending and lack of perspective correction at least? and maybe add in texture filtering and stuff) doesn't make me want to get one for PSX games, not that there's any that I really want which isn't out/coming out for the PC anyway.

    You can't just turn those features on and expect the games to look better, or even right. Particularly for perspective-correct texturing... If the developer's saving time and not calculating the perspective because he knows the PSX hardware won't be able to use it, then it's not going to be magically generated by the PSX2. As for filtering, some things SHOULD be filtered, and others SHOULDN'T... Think of text, or video running on a texture. If you turn on filtering across the baord, these things look like crap. You can't decide in hardware what should and shouldn't be changed!

  • It will be proportionally less here...I think $200-$250 is the anticipated price. $370 is what you'll pay if you go buy it in Japan. (+/- several thousand $$ for the trip)

  • I've made a small list of what seems to be a pretty complete list of the new PS2 info. If I've missed any, feel free to add-on.

    Sony of America [playstation.com]

    Sony of Europe [playstation-europe.com]

    Sony of Japan [scei.co.jp]

    PSX Nation [psxnation.com]

    IGNPSX [ign.com]

    Gaming Age [gaming-age.com]

    Next-Generation [next-generation.com]

    Gamespot [gamespot.com]

    The Magic Box [geocities.com]

    And then I'd also recomend you check out the MB's connected with some of those sites because there are some very interesting discussions in there. Also expect the major news organizations (MSNBC, ZDNET, CNN) to pick it up sometime tonight too.
  • Remember two things:
    1) The $370 is just the yen translation - Sony may sell it for less in North America because of marketing concerns.
    2) Time. It's very easy to see that production kinks, chip yields, and other price streamlining effects could bring the price down to an acceptable $250-$299 come fall 2000.

    Or at least that's what I would like to believe... ^_^
    --
  • The Genesis (or Megadrive, as it was called here) was a *massive* success in Europe. They're still being sold new, and 2nd hand game shops/stalls always have hundreds of games, which still fetch about half the cost of a 2nd hand Playstation game.

    The SNES was a rarer sight.
    --
  • From whta I have read about the Playstation2, it will be backwards compatible. However, will it be world-wide compatible, or will it be like the original and only play Japanese games?
    The specs on the system made me put off buying the Dreamcast, but I won't get the Japanese version if I will have to get an American version as well.
  • Dolt!

    The devkit is not a consumer unit. It is for licenced developers.
    --
  • Hello,

    Wow. $370 US. That's a lot of money for a game system. Can you think of any other game systems for that much that survived? I can't. But who knows...

    The true draw to any new system isn't how quick the processor is or what next-gen features it has (unless it runs Linux, of course), it's the games. Frankly, I don't expect this one to catch on at least until they make a Final Fantasy game for it. :) In the end, that's what brought the first Playstation to life.

    So, what games are coming out for this puppy?

    Joe
  • Not that it's likely to happen, but I wonder if IBM will give Sony crap about labeling their product with PS2. Remember, they're in cahoots with Nintendo for the Dolphin and the PS2 is their competition...
  • This is true, but I was considering buying one almost exclusively because it can play DVDs, and I don't have a DVD player. I do already have a playstation. If the price were around $200 I'd be able to consider it more seriously...at $370, it looks about as attainable as those Neo*Geo Gold systems were back in the day.
  • read the stats for the PS2 at www.playstation.com it states that DVD video is supported on the PS2.
  • How is an AC who signs his name at the bottom of his messages (but doesn't actually have a slashdot account) any less worthy of attention than somebody such as yourself, who has a slashdot account, but is every bit as anonymous as that AC?

    No, that's not what he was saying; he was talking about messages from AC's which didn't have ANY sort of 'persona'. I would say that if someone includes a name at the bottom of his message, he is lending a 'persona' to the message, even though he may choose not to have an account and/or send cookies to Slashdot.

  • Its called humor. And rather good.
  • The DualShock's sticks are fine, but the buttonpads just suck for me. I've always found them uncomfortable and unresponsive. I've not yet used a DreamCast's controller, though, but it looks like they took some design lessons from Nintendo (say what you want, the N64 pads work GREAT - for me, anyway). To each their own.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Last I heard the technoology hadn't been invented yet. Intel said they couldn't make those chips till sometime next year

    Huh? What are you talking about? Are you saying Sony is lying to everyone?
  • The full set of PSX colours (as far as I can remember) is:

    Grey - consumer PSX
    White - SE Asian "special edition" PSX: this one could play VCDs, which never really took off in the States or Europe but were a huge porn-delivery format in SE Asia
    Blue - devsys PSX. This is the one that you test your final gold drops of code on before releasing them to manufacturing (they play normal CD-Rs and don't have any territorial lockouts, thereby saving developers the need to get their PSXs chipped to test their games)
    Black - Yaroze. This is (was?) a special bedroom-developer Playstation: you can download 2MB of code and graphics onto it to run against the libraries, which are stored on CD-ROM. Fairly successful in that it got quite a few people jobs (they could go to games studios with their showreel Yaroze game rather than a lump of x86 code)
    --
    Cheers

    Jon
  • >Could this be Sony's first flop?

    It wouldn't suprise me. I mean, Sony's only been doing videogames one generation, it's not like it's existence is insured. The NES owned the mid to late 1980's, yet the Sega Genises a generation later cut Nintendo's market share basically in half. The same thing could happen with the PS2.
  • As mentioned b4, the USD370 figure is a direct conversion.

    The actual release cost is quoted (from Edge magazine, UK - sorry, no URL) at around USD 200 for the States and UKP 200 for Europe.

  • Re:Slashdot Moderation (Score:3)

    by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Monday September 13, 1999 @07:38AM (#1686652) Homepage
    Yeah and it's a good thing that the news media doesn't rely on anonymous sources. Oh wait, they do.

    Your stance would appear to include dismissing a cancer cure or the Secret of the Universe(TM) if it were posted by an AC. Even if they're right.

    It would be a much better idea to read the post and decide based solely on the merits of the content whether or not it should be moderated. One's ability to sign their name does not indicate that they're stupid. Lord knows we've got lots of stupid users around here.
  • Personally I don't like front-loading drives on game systems. The price point is a bit high too, it's around $500 Canadian.

    I've written up a news story about the announcement on my site, The Next Level [the-nextlevel.com], so go take a look at it.

    Jacob Rens
    Daily Videogame News and Info: http://www.the-nextlevel.com

  • Neato, you can play old playstation games on the new one. Well, as long as you have your old playstation why should it matter? Is it a law that once you buy a new system that you have to bag all your olf stuff unless it is backwards compatible? I just spent $400.00 on the new Dreamcast stuff. I'll gladly spend $3.70 for a DVD player as long as it has doubly surround sound. All the PSX2 stuff we see now is going to be totaly changed by the lauch date. We still have a year to go.
  • What kind of computer are YOU posting from? I don't know about you, but my video card can do some pretty nice stuff at 1024 x 768. And if there's new technology out there I can just plug it in.

    The correct point to make to PC'er who lords his system over consoles is that the PC is MUCH more expensive. But with that cost comes capabilities and versatility that a console can only dream of. It's apples and oranges in the end. And its a shame that more game development companies don't realize that and keep trying to shove square pegs into round holes by porting their stuff to every last platform under the sun.

  • Try 8 player Sega Saturn Bomberman. It's a blast. Not all multiplayer games require split screen.
    --
  • I'm from Australia. Our dollars only 0.65 of yours, plus, we don't get super sweet deals from major vendors with net access, etc. We have to pay a full price on machines.

    Besides, a Voodoo III will not always be fully maxed out with a dual CPU because a lot of games are written for broad consumer machines, not a single spec like a console. That is why they can squeeze every last piece of performance from a console - Check out GT2 for PSX, remebering a PSX is a 486 with 16MB, a 4x CD and an equivalent of a Voodoo I.
  • Take a look [gamespot.com] at the size of the PS2. This thing is incredibly huge for a console, it's like a big tower desktop computer. I don't even think it could fit in the shelves that I store my consoles on. I wonder how much this thing weighs?
  • Where did you hear this? Sound's like hearsay to me.
  • On a sorta related note, anyone else wish controller cords were longer? I mean, how much does it really cost Sony to add an extra 2 feet of cord? I'd love to have a little more room, or, if it weren't so expenisive already, just have cordless controllers. Wouldn't that be neat.
  • Japanese retail distribution channels are a tangled mess. Governed by longstanding relationships between corporate families, the channel adds quite a bit onto the final price tag.

    The US market has developed a very cost efficient distribution channel. And when you deal with the kind of volume the American market demands, economy of scale keeps things like shipping costs down.
  • a) Controller backward compatability is important. I have over 13 controllers for my PSX

    b) It gives me fewer devices I have to hook up to my TV. Which has limited # of inputs. And limited amount of space around it.
  • Even if its expensive, it will be a great success.

    Its not just a game, think about the possibility to play DVD-movies and so on...

    I think the future of gaming consoles (and every piece of electronic equipment) will be more than a game. Dreamcast with a internal modem... hmm..

  • I have old PS games, but no PS, therefore backwards compatibilty will be a great boon in my case.

    Why? Because my PS's memory slots went kaput post-warranty. So when I get my PSX2, I will now be able to play my whole library without spending another $100.
  • >What color were the NES, SNES, and PSX

    NES: Gray
    SNES: Gray and Purple
    PSX: Gray and I'm pretty sure there was a special edition white one too.
  • all these people complaining about two controller ports and no modem should look at the stats and realize how upgradeably it is

    That's why I like my consoles better than my computer. I don't have to upgrade and spend more money. I don't have to worry about hardware incompatibilites or having to download the latest patches. The last thing I want to do is spend time (albeit not much hopefully) and money upgrading the stupid thing.
  • Although this was some time ago, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible with the Atari 2600. Which is interesting, considering the Atari 7800 came out *after* the Atari 5200, which *wasn't* backwards compatible. There were a few Atari 2600 games that weren't compatible with the 7800. You could also use 2600 controllers on the 7800, which was nice considering the 7800 controllers were terrible. Several other systems also had modules that allowed you to play 2600 games. The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and Intellivision come to mind. Obviously building backwards compatibility for consoles as complex as the Playstation is a bit more involved than for the 2600. :)
  • I have resonably good karma, and proably haver moderation abilities 80% of the time.

    I have never moderated a AC's posting up however, and the reason is simple, if you dont attach your name (or some kind of a persona) to you messages you may as well not have writen them.

    Find me a newspaper that has letters to the editor from anonymous people. Cant be dont. One of the local papers has a weekly phone pool, and to be dirrectly quoted you need to leave you name and town.

    I do have my thereshold set at -1 to check for abuses, and i have found them. I am also forced to wade through dozens of AC postings that arent worth the electrons there stored on.

    If you have something to say, say it, and attach you name to it.

  • Ouch! That seems almost pointless! Almost every disk i'v seen in the last several monthes has been dual layered. This also limits the expandability of games. When its first released i'm sure most games won't even fill a fraction of one layer, but after a year or two, alot of games will be wanting to use very high rez cut sceenes with digital audio, this could quickly fill an entire layer. This is also a serious scaling back of DVD tech. even the first comercial DVD players from a few years ago can play dual layered disks, even though none had been produced yet. But, if this whole think is actualy just a mistake, i may have to sell that that ugly DV-414 sitting next to my TV and buy myself a PS2!
  • "Drawers cost money, and if Sony can shave off a few bucks for this sucker, they'd more than likely do it"

    In addition to the drawer, it has 2 USB ports and a PCMCIA card slot, which seems like overkill on a dedicated game console with network connectivity for internet and gaming purposes. It seems odd to me that they added these extras instead of trying to get the price lower.
  • Uhm, you forgot the fact that the Saturn has no hardware 3D acceleration, therefore all 3D work had to be done in software. However, the Saturn does have more RAM. All in all, the added RAM makes the Saturn superior when it comes to 2D (esp. fighting games - their version of Marvel vs. Street Fighter actually let you flip players during play), but lets it lag horribly when it comes to 3D games.
  • whats wrong with region protection?? Movies do get released at different times in different parts of the world. Companies make alot of money off of sales of a "new release". but if the movie has already been availible for 3 monthes just by ording it from "distcounted-movie-store".com it cuts a big chunk out of their proffits. This way they have more control over distribution, and the true movie nuts who really just can't wait to get the new disk can simply purchase a non-region coded player.
  • oooo...now where does the mod chip go?
  • If you want this to be a DVD and CD player as well and hope this will be an important part of the AV market a drawer makes sense. Without a drawer you expose the lens to dirt and scratches. At the price Sony will be charging, I certainly wouldn't want a lens scratch to render my investment useless. Besides, how many DVD players do you see without a drawer? The current Playstation is cheap and looks it.

    Sales of the the current PlayStation accounted for around 40 percent of Sony's consolidated operating profit in the past year to March. Sony cannot simply afford to have this be a simple games console, especially, if they hope to continue to be important in the consumer AV market. It is a good move on Sony's part to allow CD and DVD playback on this. It appeals to both the games and the AV markets. And if you want to appeal to the AV market you simply can't make the thing look cheap or be easily damaged due to daily use.

    That's why you have the drawer. It's part of a smart move to define a new market niche. I'm surprised it doesn't have Firewire/iLink input/output for video, but maybe that'll come eventually. :)
  • But compared to the DC at $200 (now, and will probally be $150 by fall) and the rumored price of the Dolphin (around $150 at launch) Sony will have the highest price machine by far. And when people see, oh, I can get a PS2 for $300 or a Nintendo Dolphin for $150 or even $200, and they both have comparable graphics, then which one do you think they'll pick?
  • To hit the streets with an entire established library of games is a good thing

    But it really isn't a library. I could play the same things on a PSX, and if I didn't already own a PSX, I could pick one up for real cheap. Why buy a PS2 if I can get the same game experiance for $300 cheaper? Counting the current PSX library in with the PS2 is not right.
  • If you have been through the video games newsgroups you may have remembered a thread that keeps popping up suggesting that failed consoles are always black (saturn, and it seems psx2) while successful once are grey (psx1 and dreamcast.) This theory is silly but, has come true of late. It will be interesting to see what happens.

    I've heard this too, and going back farther, it seems to be true. The SMS was black vs. the NES which was grey, and look which won. Same deal with the Genesis/SNES, and then the Saturn/PSX. Not to say that each of Sega's systems didn't do ok on their own, but certainly each of the grey systems "won." We'll see if this holds true with the DC/PSY. Personally, I'm hoping it doesn't as I want to get a PSY sometime after they release.
  • Actually the Genesis came out a while before the SNES. It mainly competed with the NES, which, in my opinion, it lost horribly to, even though it had superior hardware.

    Once the SNES came out, the Genesis was really left in the dust.
  • Man I copy playstaison gamez too. Peopel say that its bad, but thier lamerz! Copying CDs are cool! And Sony shoouldnt hate us 'cuz more people buy the sytems, and plus Sony saves money cuz they don't have to make all those extra CDs! Sony should pay us! COPYING STUFF RULEZ!! WAREZ RULEZ!!
  • Sony's reportedly leaving the dual-focusing laser out of the PSX2 so as to avoid setting it up to compete directly with their home theater components. This means that the PSX2 will not play dual-layered discs. So just don't get too excited to play your new Titanic, The Mummy,The Matrix, Terminator 2, the future Star Wars, or any other DVD that has two layers (aka RSDL).

    Are you sure that is what it means?
    Isn't "dual focus laser" Sony jargon for a single laser that does CD (including CD-R) and DVD pickup (rather than a two laser system)?
  • The URL's /.'d out. Bugger.

    Added point to your post, A Voodoo III costs $300 and its not as good, plus you need a $5000 machine to fully utilise it.
  • Dumping is selling an item for less than it's cost of production. Even if this were the case, which I doubt, there are no US-based competitors. Without those, no one would press for a suit to be filed. Sony would be allowed to proceed. That law is set up to "protect" domestic based competitors, a repeal(or ignoral) of which is good for consumers.
  • Ok, I just read through about 15 comments and they were pretty wrong, so I thought I'd lend my knowledge of this subject.

    THe Saturn started out at $400 in america. I forget what the Playstation started at, but it was pretty close. 4 years later you can get one for $99. The orignal 8-bit Nintendo(god bless its soul) started out at I think $300 with 3 games, 2 controllers, a light gun, and the ROB. value these days.

    The Playstation 2 is much more powerful than all of those linux boxes you all are running(hell, its way more powerful than my G3). Game systems are designed to play games. The new game systems are designed to play pretty games. The main processor in all of the next-gen systems, is a little more advanced than you video card. just because it says CPU doesn't mean that it is an all purpose processor like a pentium. THe amin processor alone can probally beat the pants of of a high end computer right now, not to mention the fact that it has an extral graphics processor(and in the case of the PSX2 two extra VPUs and 2 extral FPUs). You will never run word on one of these, but you'll get quake at 640x480(limitation of TV screens)at least with 60fps probally more. It has 32 megs of ram. That is more than is in all of the current generation(including the dreamcast) have combined(PSX1 4, N64 8 at most, dreamcast 16(shared between processor and graphic chips)
    nintendo's next system will have 16 megs just for the graphic chip and probally 32 for the system to make use of. If you don't belive me on the raw power that these things have, imaging your system playing something like NFL2K for dreamcast with 1 megs of ram, or better lets go with something we all know and love Quake 2. You can't buy(you can make not buy) a computer with 16 megs of ram. And if you could it sure as hell couldn't play quake 2 at 640x480 with all the OpenGL extentions on, at 60 fps.(even windows would boot in like a half hour)

    Second, the playstation 2 CANNOT play DVD movies. Well, technically it can, but there is no ability to do this built into the system. I'm not sure what will happen, but the PSX2 has no way to navigate the menus on DVDs. It will be added as a thingie that fits on the back, and will probally cost about $70 bucks extral(the price is spectulation, I know that there will be no movies initally).

    I think those are the only glaring errors that I saw. just remember that Consoles are not full-blown computers. They don't need to be.

  • Don't know about the genesis... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But I think systems like NeoGeo, 3DO, the Phillips video game system, which were all superior to the 16-bit video game consoles of the time, were $300+ and I think that was a serious factor in why they didn't take off. I believe the NeoGeo was like $700+ when I first remember seeing it in a store...and the games were like $150.

    Could this be Sony's first flop? Possibly...I doubt kids, and their parents, will want to throw around nearly $400 for a system when much cheaper ones (assuming the Dolphin is around ~$200) are available with comparable performance and games.

  • Looks sexy - not! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i think it looks pretty average..... although it does look better than the original playstation - that thing looked like a portable toilet.
  • The Sega Genesis problems mainly stemmed from the fact that it was a rush job, to catch up with Sony's surprise release of the playstation.

    It wasn't well designed, was really hard to program for ... those have more to do with its failure. Nobody likes buggy games, and developers don't like programming for buggy platforms .

    ( and before you can say it, I know windows is an exception ! )

  • Back when Atari 2600 + Nintendo cost outrageous amounts, my friends family paid ~$5000 for what was a "decent" 386DX/33, people are a LOT Cheaper now, when was the last time an ok cpu(celeron 366) was under $60. Never. People will not spend ~$300 for a console, most people buy at three points, early adopters/enthusiasts $200, Johnny's christmas/chaunakua/kwanza present $150, Guy with $100 to throw at a fun game system. There is very little market for a $300+ system, Unless it can play DVD(2 layer too) as well as a real dvd player, remember the PSX2 might be jack of all trades, master of one, game playing.

  • WTF is the differance between the Dual Shock and Dual shock 2? The picture looks identical to the one I already have.

    Does anyone know of any compatibility issues with the PCMCIA card slots? Or the USB/FireWire ports? Will my PC stuff work in it (hopefully?)?
  • $370 is what you'll pay if you go buy it in Japan. (+/- several thousand $$ for the trip) plus or minus?? Do you mean I could get paid thousands of dolars just for going to japan? kick ass
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

  • Slashdot Moderation (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12, 1999 @10:40PM (#1686722)
    I admit this is offtopic, but it has got to be said somewhere.

    The slashdot moderation system is not working - decent arguments from anonymous cowards (and even logged in people) such as myself are never being rated up. I think I know why. Are the people who are moderating allowed to set their mimimum tolerance ? Ie do they set their threshold up, and then never even see the articles they are supposed to be moderating ?

    Clearly if you are taking the responsibility of being a moderator then you should not be able to shield yourself from significant portions of the debate.

    This theory would explain the recent spate of highly uprated articles which have recieved detailed and rigorous response (basically reducing much of what had been said to the misinformed opinion that it was) and yet while the votes continue to push the original article up, the worthy response does not get voted up, nor any real followups to it (presumably because of the threshhold problem for readers, although this is not really a problem).

    What do you think ? Make people indulging in moderation read everything...seems only fair [even if the final moderation is still bad, at least they saw it]
  • Look at your TV. How are game graphics going to get better on it. I applaud sega for making a vga box for the DC, I think after dolphin/psx2/DC the graphics on Analog TV will cease to improve. As for HDTV/Digital it will get better, but current HDTV isn't all that impressive(fast motion has plenty of compression artifacts). We need a vga-out on the new systems.

  • But I think that supporting DVD video is really the key feature. If this comes out to the American public at under $300, this feature could be a Dad's last straw.

    Heck, sell a remote at a reasonable price ($35 or under), and I bet they could cash in on that in a hurry. The beauty here is that this doesn't have to have good performance DVD-wise at all, because this is a totally different market.

    I haven't bought a console since 8-bit Nintendo, but I think I'll be biting the bullet on this baby.
  • The Dual Shock 2 supports analog input on all buttons, while the original only did on the thumbsticks.
  • Lets try this again ;)

    Atari 2600
    Intellivision
    Colecovision
    Sega Master
    NES
    TurboGrafix 16
    Neo/Geo
    Genesis
    Super NES
    CD-i
    3do
    Saturn (came out first by a few months :)
    Playstation
    N64
    Dreamcast
  • if you have old PS games, you have an old PS, therefore you don't need backwards compatibility

  • PSX2 destroys PC hardware + real URL (Score:4)

    by rcromwell2 ( 73488 ) on Sunday September 12, 1999 @11:15PM (#1686786)

    The real Sony URL is http://www.scei.co.jp/ps2 where you will find the real specs and screenshots.


    The PSX2's CPU has *14* separate FPU units vs 3 on the Athlon. It has two vector units capable of doing dot products, cross products, etc. It has a x9 multiply-and-accumulate unit which can do super-fast matrix operations. In short, for 3d calculations, it blows the PentiumIII/Athlon, and even the Alpha away.

    It's normal ram is RDRAM for a 3.6gb/sec bandwidth.

    It's rasterizer has a 2,560 bit bus! (embedded dram) with a RAM bandwidth of 48 GIGABYTEs/sec which is 48 times more than AGP 2x. It can render a whopping 2.4 gigapixels/sec using 16 pixel pipelines which is about 5 times the best PC 3d accelerator.

    Besides hardware transform and lighting, it's flexible enough to render 60+ million polys/sec and even 16 million+ BEZIER curved patches a sec.
    That's about 20 times the bet polygon throughput on a PentiumIII with SSE, and for Bezier patches it's probably 50 times faster.

    It's I/O and sound processors alone best the best PC I/O and sound controllers. (It's I/O processor alone is good enough to run Playstation 1 games)

    And, it decodes and displays DVD Video.

    In short, $360 is fucking cheap for this box! This box destroys E-Machine PCs 100 times over.

    And they have another box called TOOL which lets you develop and run PSX2 games on Linux with the PSX2 hardware!


    Just another comment. When the Playstation 1 first came out, it cost $299 with NO packin game. After buying a game and a second controller, with tax, it cost near $400.

    Folks, this is technology you should be excited about. You should dream of having a Linux box with the PSX2 hardware as your CPU/graphics card/CPU and DVD player!

  • Design... (Score:3)

    by Craig Maloney ( 1104 ) on Sunday September 12, 1999 @11:16PM (#1686788) Homepage

    I sincerely doubt this is the final design of the PSX2. I don't believe a drawer will be on the final design of the thing. The only other consoles that had a drawer on it was the ill fated 3DO and the CD-I. Drawers cost money, and if Sony can shave off a few bucks for this sucker, they'd more than likely do it, especially with the Dreamcast near the "impulse buy" price-range (under $200).

    It's going to be an interesting Christmas, and one heck of a spring.

  • Good and Bad... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have been following the PSX2 development for some time now and with this latest release of info on the system, I see some good and bad points. Lets see here...

    Good:
    "The new system is backwards compatible with the original PlayStation." Very good for those of us who have invested way more money than they should have on a huge library of games.
    "High capacity 8MB Memory Card" Great, too many of the games for PSX used an entire card's blocks to save.
    "CD-ROM and DVD-ROM" Good cause I just purchased FF8 and its 4 CDs, would've been nice to have it as just 1 DVD, and there would've been still more room for another 4 hours of CG animation. heh...
    "128 Bit "Emotion EngineTM" 294.912 MHz 32MB Direct RDRAM "Graphics Synthesizer" 147.456MHz 4MB VRAM" What else can you say here other than its going to have some kick ass graphics.
    "$370 US" I know some of you think this is way too high, but when you think of what you're getting, its not that bad. Sure, if you compare the price to say Dreamcast, N64, or PSX it may seem high, but you are not getting just a game console. You can play DVD movies on this thing. Have any of you priced DVD players, for a decent Sony DVD players you pay $300-400. So if you are getting a DVD/CD/game system in one for $370, I think you got a deal.

    Now for Bad:
    "Controller port (2)" I don't know about the rest of you but I find this a really bad point. I own a PSX and N64 and when it comes time to play multiplayer games with my friends when we get together, it always comes down to playing games on the N64 because it has 4 controllers standard on the system. PSX made an adapter so you could have more players playing, but there are like next to no companies that support it so what's the point. Almost anyone who plays games on the computer knows that multiplay is what keeps games alive, why not use these same principles with the PSX2 and give us atleast 4 controller ports standard!

    Well that's the only thing I found wrong so the good still outweigh the bad heavily, and even if Sony doesn't modify the system to support more controllers, I know I'll still buy it and love it, just would be nice to have it all though, eh? hehe

    Damn create account didn't work again!
    Killjoy76 [mailto]
    Jason Carter
  • You need to insert the Amiga CD32 inbetween 1 and 2 up there. :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • The Sega Genesis problems mainly stemmed from the fact that it was a rush job, to catch up with Sony's surprise release of the playstation

    Damn straight. Such a rush job they released it several years before the Playstation, and the specs weren't even in the same ballpark. It was more comparable to the SNES. In fact you'd almost think it was a console from the previous generation. Typical Sega for you.
  • Yeek, now I'm glad I have a dedicated DVD player. Ultimate Tenchi (all 13 episodes of the original series, plus a complete encyclopedia of all the characters, settings, etc.) is on 3 double-layered DVDs.

    Myself, I'm not too eager for the PSY. Yeah, the specs are very impressive, but they still have those crappy controllers, and it seems that the Dreamcast already has more than enough computing power for quite some time; I think the PSY will have the problem the Jaguar did - too much of a legacy 'feel' while really being far ahead of its time. Also, the fact that they apparently won't try to improve PSX games being emulated (like, why don't they improve the color blending and lack of perspective correction at least? and maybe add in texture filtering and stuff) doesn't make me want to get one for PSX games, not that there's any that I really want which isn't out/coming out for the PC anyway.

    I'll wait on getting a Dreamcast (want to see a commitment to a 10baseT adapter, want to see the price come down, and need it to be in stock anyway :) and I'll probably also get a Dolphin, since as bad of a company Nintendo is, they have Shigeru Miyamoto whose games are just fun, but so far, the only reason I see for getting a PSY is that I could theoretically develop fun stuff on it, assuming they release the SDKs and the like, which I highly doubt. Just because they use Linux as a dev platform doesn't mean they use Linux ideals, after all.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Can anyone clarify what they mean by 128-bit system? Is that the internal register size? Bus? I think the the Dreamcast was billed as being 128-bit as well, yet when I looked at the specs, the integer processor was 32-bits, the floating point was 64, and the bus was 32. Yeah, 32+32+64=128, but really that means absolutely nada. Anyone have info on the Playstation2?
  • I get what he's saying. I've seen_it/been_a_victim myself. I don't think the problem is moderates not seeing the posts, I think their unable to act on them. When I moderate it's not unusual for me to see much more than 5 posts that need to up/down graded in every forum I read (and I don't read all of them).

    This has been discussed before, but I think each moderate needs either more points, or more moderators. Rob doesn't like the idea of more points, but I don't see any evidence of more moderators either. M2 is good idea, I like it, but that only addresses part of the issue. Perhaps 5 points a day for 3 days would be good.

    (normally I'd expect this to be moded up to 2 (interesting) but this isn't the forum for this. However there really isn't a forum for this right now. So moderator, do what you want.)
  • I think the figure of $370 for the PS2 is not very accurate. It looks like they've just taken the price in yen and converted it to US dollars. In my experience, this is not a very good way to calculate the price of something from Japan. For most consumer electronics, Japanese consumers pay more than U.S. consumers. I can't imagine why this is so, especially considering things like shipping costs, import taxes, etc, but it seems to be the case. I remember the shock and horror I felt one day when I noticed a PC port of Ikari Warriors selling for the equivalent of U.S. $100.00.

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