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Hardware specifications and tech demos dominated the show last year, but Sony revealed the last remaining details about the new PlayStation at this year's press conference, including final launch information. Sony originally planned a spring 2006 release for the console, but Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi announced in March that the console will not ship until November due to delays in finalizing the Blu-ray copy-protection technology specifications.
Sony is now planning to give the PlayStation 3 a simultaneous worldwide launch. The new system will be available with two different hard-drive options in Japan, the United States, Europe, and Australia in November. The console will hit Japan first on November 11. The 20GB model will sell for 59,800 yen, but Sony will let Japanese retailers name their own price for the 60GB version. The PlayStation 3 will launch in the United States, Europe, and Australia on November 17. The 20GB version will retail for $499 and the 60GB version will retail for $599 in the US, and 499 and 599 euros in Europe, respectively.
In an attempt to make inroads with the general consumer, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all given much more attention to cosmetic considerations in this console generation. The new PlayStation 3 console has a simple design, resembling a minimalist stereo component.
Early prototypes indicate that the new case will be available in three different colors--white, black, and silver--but initial US models will be black. Like the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3 will be able to stand vertically or sit horizontally on an AV rack. The curved console-top suggests that the PS3 will need to sit at the very top of your equipment stack if placed horizontally. The console will weigh in at a solid 11 pounds. In comparison, the relatively chunky Xbox weighs 8.5 pounds and the Xbox 360 weighs 7.7 pounds. The PS3 measures 12.8"(W) x 3.8"(H) x 10.8"(L), which is in line with the other consoles.
Wireless Bluetooth Controllers
The PlayStation 3 controller Sony introduced at E3 last year resembled what can very easily be described as a "batarang," in reference to Batman's bat-shaped throwing weapon. At E3 2006, Sony revealed the new controller, which heavily resembles the traditional DualShock design. The L2 and R2 shoulder buttons located on the top of the controller have also been enlarged, with increased depth in stroke for more subtle game control. Sony has also enlarged the tilting angle of the analog joysticks to enable more delicate manipulation and a wider range of motion. Whereas the analog sticks on the DualShock controller for the PlayStation 2 had 8-bit sensitivity, the new controller will have 10-bit motion detection.
The new controller has two analog sticks, the usual four-button complement on the right side, and four top-side trigger buttons. However, in Nintendo Wii fashion, the new PlayStation 3 controller will also have motion-sensing capabilities. Sony's Phil Harrison stated that the controller is capable of sensing motion in six degrees: up, down, left, right, forward, and backward. Even with the added functionality, the controller will weigh no more than the wired DualShock controller, according to Harrison. Dylan Jobe of Incognito Studios proceeded to demonstrate the controller's motion sensitivity in Warhawk, a jet-based fighter game. He tilted the controller to control the orientation of his aircraft. Tilting the controller upward caused the aircraft to point its nose in the air and shifting the sides of the controller up and down caused the aircraft to tilt in a similar manner. Additionally, the controller will no longer feature force-feedback vibration. Sony claims that the feedback vibration would interfere with games that use the motion sensor.
Like the Xbox 360 controller, the new PlayStation 3 controller will be wireless, but it will function via Bluetooth 2.0 EDR instead of 2.4GHz RF. Devices operating with Bluetooth generally have a range of 30 feet. Sony reports that the controller will have a 24-hour battery life, a figure that seems to be in line with other Bluetooth devices but far short of the 300-hour 2.4GHz models available for current consoles. Despite the decreased battery life, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR offers numerous features. Bluetooth 2.0 EDR can transmit data at rates of up to 3.0Mbps. Furthermore, by using Bluetooth, the PlayStation 3 may be capable of supporting other Bluetooth devices on the market, such as headsets, mice, and keyboards.
Also, you will be able to recharge the controller by connecting it to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cable. The controller will be functional while tethered to the system and will also be hot pluggable, which means you can plug and unplug controllers while the system is on.
The PlayStation Portable will be able to work with the new console. The PSP will be able to function as a remote control or as a sort of controller for the PlayStation 3. To demonstrate the possibilities of PSP-to-PS3 connectivity, Harrison showed off Formula 1, a PS3 racing game, which could output a video stream to the PSP that lets the player use the portable as a rearview mirror while playing the game on the PS3.
Media Mogul
The 2.5" portable hard drives supply the system with much-needed storage space for network downloads, applications, and home-server capabilities. Additionally, games will use the hard drive for game saves, and it will cache game files for decreased load times. During the Gran Turismo HD E3 2006 demonstration, Sony mentioned that load times would be reduced to two to three seconds. The game took around six to seven seconds to load during the E3 demo, but loading times will likely drop once developers have more time to optimize.
The 60GB PlayStation 3 has an enormous number of inputs and outputs, some wired, some not. The console features a front-slot-loading Blu-ray optical-disc drive, four USB ports, and a memory stick, as well as compact flash and SD readers to provide for an absurd level of media connectivity. The 20GB PlayStation 3, in comparison, has a much more limited feature set. It won't have memory stick, compact flash, or SD card ports. Upon closer inspection, Sony has cut specs for both systems since first announcing the console.
The original PlayStation 3 specs showed the system with dual HDMI ports. At E3 '06, Sony revealed that the 60GB console will only have one HDMI port, and the 20GB version will not have any HDMI ports. At last year's E3, Sony claimed that the system would be able to output dual 1080p video, but the HDMI cuts have effectively eliminated that possibility. The 20GB version also might have trouble outputting 1080p for content-protected Blu-ray movies, and whether the system can output 1080p for games remains to be seen.
Sony will equip each PlayStation 3 system with a Blu-ray optical-disc drive that can play games and movie discs. Each Blu-ray disc can hold up to 54GB worth of data, which should virtually guarantee that games won't be left wanting for extra media space. During his Game Developers Conference 2006 keynote address, Sony's Phil Harrison boasted that the storage capacity of a Blu-ray disc is large enough to hold localized content for all versions of a game, letting publishers ship one global disc instead of stamping out a new version for each language region. Games will be region-free, but movies will still have region locks preventing multiregion playback. However, according to Japanese IT Media, the Blu-ray spec now has North America, South America, and Asia (except for China) in region 1. If the spec doesn't change, that means your US PlayStation 3 should be able to play those Blu-ray Godzilla movies imported from Japan. The PlayStation 3 also comes with support for many of the older disc formats, including CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD+R. The system will also be backward compatible with PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games.
Sony's original specifications stated that the PlayStation 3 would come with three Ethernet ports, but the newly revealed specifications from E3 06 show that the system will arrive with only one Ethernet port. The 60GB version of the PlayStation 3 will also come with Wi-Fi built-in, but the 20GB version will only have the Ethernet port. We can't ignore the fact that the PS3 has all the tools to function as a personal video recorder and home-media server. The larger 60GB drive will likely prove much more useful than the 20GB drive if you wish to take advantage of the additional media functionality.
Supercomputer for Computer Entertainment
The PlayStation 3 will have a 3.2GHz Cell processor that consists of a single PowerPC-based core with seven synergistic processing units. The Cell is the result of a joint effort between IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. The primary PowerPC core has a 512KB L2 cache, and each SPE has 256KB of its own memory to work with. The CPU has an eighth SPE for "redundancy." IBM has stated that the first prototypes have weighed in with 234 million transistors each. To put things into perspective, desktop PC processor manufacturer Intel only broke into the 200-million transistor range with its dual-core Pentium Processor Extreme Edition chip, which was released in early 2005.
The Cell processor will also be powerful enough to drive a new class of gameplay physics impossible to run on older console hardware. The PS3 will be able to simulate cloth and fluid, as well as large-scale rigid-body interactions with hundreds and thousands of objects colliding on screen. Today's PCs in comparison will need a physics add-on card or find a way to tap the GPU for physics processing to run PS3-level physics effects. Additionally, developers will be able to use the Cell's SPEs to give games new audio effects previously only available on the PC with dedicated audio processing.
The industry-wide shift to multicore processing platforms will have a major impact on developers in the coming years, since we're now moving into more-complicated hardware. A lot of the burden will fall upon the hardware manufacturers themselves to design systems and provide tools that will make it easier for programmers to write games. Sony has announced that the PS3 will use Open GL/ES, a specialized API closely related to Open GL, and programmers will be able to access the Cell's SPEs using C or C++ tools, instead of having to program on the assembly level as they did with the PS2.
Synthesizing Reality
Sony will pair the Cell with a very powerful graphics processor based on advanced Nvidia technology. You may remember that Nvidia did the graphics for the first Xbox system, but with reports of contract disputes between Nvidia and Microsoft, few were surprised when both companies chose to change dance partners for the next console cycle. Microsoft went with ATI for the Xbox 360, and Nvidia hooked up with Sony on the PlayStation 3.
The end result of that collaboration is the PlayStation 3 RSX "Reality Synthesizer" graphics-processing unit, a massive 550MHz, 300-million-transistor graphics chip based on advanced GeForce graphics technology. According to a written statement from Nvidia, the RSX transistor count is "more than the total number of transistors in both the central-processing units and the graphics-processing units of the three leading current-generation systems, combined." During the PlayStation 3 E3 2005 presentation, Nvidia CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang explained that "the RSX has twice the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, the highest performance GPU in the world today. Each of these GPUs retails for $500. There will be two of them, equivalent horsepower, in the RSX."
The PS3 will jump out ahead in hardware performance, but the PC isn't far behind. Nvidia replaced the GeForce 6800 Ultra with the much more powerful GeForce 7800 GTX last summer. It turns out that the RSX and GeForce 7800 GTX share a similar architecture, but the RSX is still slightly faster. Nvidia has since released its GeForce 7900 GTX refresh part, but the PlayStation 3 still has an advantage in that the entire system is built specifically for gaming instead of general processing.
A Trip Down Memory Lane
The PlayStation 3 has 256MBs of Rambus XDR memory and 256MBs of GDDR3 memory dedicated to graphics. Nvidia also claims that the RSX can take advantage of the combined 512MBs of memory, since it is capable of writing directly to system memory, but the 256MBs dedicated to graphics memory should be plenty for now. The increased graphics memory bandwidth and storage space will let developers use high-resolution textures and enable antialiasing for incredibly detailed, jaggy-free graphics. The programmable shader capabilities greatly increase graphics efficiency, letting game developers create advanced effects such as subsurface scattering and other advanced lighting effects. We expect most game developers to target native 720p and 1080i HD resolutions, as 1080p screens are still fairly rare.
Every new system release comes with its share of whispers about how the new hardware is finicky or difficult to program for, but there's always a learning curve for each new platform release--it is new hardware after all. Developers will take a year or two to get up to speed while Sony releases and refines its development tools. Game developers grumbled about the PlayStation 2 when it was first released, too. Judging by the PlayStation 3's ever-growing game list, Sony isn't having a difficult time getting developers and publishers to sign on to produce games for the new system.
Our favorite PlayStation game franchises and developers will certainly make the transition to the new system. Sony trotted out several new games during its E3 press conference last year, most notably Metal Gear Solid 4 from Konami, Epic's Unreal Tournament 2007, Tekken 6 from Namco, and Vision Gran Turismo from Polyphony Digital, and Sony later revealed its Japanese lineup at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005.
