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US PlayStation 2 To Have A Modem & Hard Drive?
rit writes, "It looks like Sony is trying to beat Microsoft to the punch with the Playstation 2 - according to this article at CNet, they have announced plans to release the U.S. Version of the Playstation 2 with a modem and a hard drive. No details on modem speed or hard drive, but we can assume it will be at least up to par or close to what Microsoft plans to offer with the X-Box; giving Sony a one-year head start on Microsoft for gaining a stronger foothold in the gaming market. Now if only they'd ship it with an ethernet card...
"
Now, they just have to add a keyboard and a tape drive and they would have the Colecovision 2000.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they make as they fly by
Dreamcast already has this now. Does anyone know how useful this is? Can you really surf the Internet or play online games?
But of course, if you are going to surf the Internet, I'm sure that the first thing you are going to go to is the "JenniCam", since it is such a fixture of the Internet.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Microsoft will probably only release anything decent after the fifth version, and by the time it does, it probably only be as good as PS1, but seriously, Microsoft *is* going to flop with this very much in the same way that they flop in every single field that they go into in which they know nothing about, **unless**, they buy into someone, and judging by Sega and Nintendo's poor showing, I wouldn't be that surprised.
-I can only program my video,ahh, I am not a gook, but a joook -The World is a theatre of the absurd
I thought that the PS2 (as is) was supposed to be capable of handling anything Micro$oft would be creating. The Emotion Engine would slaughter the competition, hands down, and I wouldn't have to worry about what choice to make. Now they're going to throw a modem and a HD in there (which I am assuming will increase the already outrageous $300+ cost). The modem I understand, but a HD? Why? Developers for the Japanese PS2 must not have had a HD in mind, and I doubt the American developers did/do either. What the hell does this do to the games already in development? And why even put a HD in a system with these performance numbers, I would think it would just lead to *lower* performance. BAH!
_______
I just wish I could c:\format Internet
I don't see a reason to ship it with a hard drive and modem. The IEEE 1394, USB and PCMCIA ports should be a clue to anyone (who knows what they are) that it can easily support modems, hard drives, etc...
Shipping them with hard drives and modems will soon become obsolete. I hope sony takes the direction of making them optional accessories and not turn to a proprietary bus to market sony-only accessories (that's all we would need).
Personally I think they should leave it alone and work on developing a front-end for the Playstation (hmm - SonyLinux?) to make hardware support and driver detection so the hardware really has no limits to what is plugged into it.
- Detritus
"I never really liked computers, but then the server went down on me"
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It's not running Linux. Its OS is not open-source. It doesn't use a Transmeta CPU. It doesn't have Ethernet. They don't even talk about it on Userfriendly, and Hubble hasn't spotted one near yet.
Really, I wonder why any slashdotter would be interrested into it...
But... I WANT ONE!!!!
max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
The next PSX 2 in the US will have a modem, a hard drive,... In other words, il will be a computer with proprietary harware.
;)
I can't see the point of it : wouldn't a cheap console be better for simple gaming ? With a cheap PC next to it for Internet apps and word processing ?
OK, it would have an refreshing architecture compared to the usual x86 crap. But I'll be really happy the day I'll see a story about cheap PowerPC boxes, or something like this.
I mean... Real non-x86 computers with open hardware which aren't labeled as 'game consoles'.
Moderator : this is NOT flamebait nor troll... In fact, those are just my ideas
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
And, you just KNOW that as soon as it's released, three dozen geeks will start working on porting Linux to it, and two weeks later, distributed.net will have clients for it!
CSG_Surferdude
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
But where's the games for PSX2? No one's talking much about them that I've heard. It seems like if I want a box to just play games with, the Dreamcast is the way to go. I've got plenty of computers already; give me a gaming console for a change.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
According to here, the hard drive will be 8GB, matching that of the X-Box. IMHO, Sony is doing this for two reasons, to counter the onslaught of the X-Box as well as to strangle the Dreamcast out of exsistence. The only thing the Dreamcast had going for it was its modem, but with the PS2 now having a modem, apparently, you can expect Dreamcast sales to lag off. As for the X-Box, even with its launch well over a year after that of the PS2, Sony could still feel the heat from the fire. Sony basically doesn't want Microsoft to do to them what they are doing to Sega, having more features and thus strangling off sales.
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
This should have been expected, it's just a further part of the process of everything technological slowly melting together. Game boxes are becoming computers, computers are becoming game boxes, entertainment centers are becoming obsolete.
This is all leading to that eventual day when all your computing power and entertainment value will all fit on a little card (probably branded AOL/Time Warner) that slips in your back pocket, and then we'll all accidentally lose them in our sofas and society will disintegrate and we'll be back to the dark ages.
Hail the march of technology!
-Mad Dreamer
-Mad Dreamer
Ethernet makes sense even for those without a permanent net connection (big gaming party in the house?). Also, most people with cable modems use Ethernet - the connection between the cable "modem" and your computer is often an Ethernet link. Add a cheap hub, and voilà!
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
IBM is making some pretty durable IDE drives these days; 10, 12 and 14mm form factors with a guarantee of G-rating while spun up. They're very pricey, but I doubt you could kill one without intentional violence (hammer, chisel, 1962 Dodge).. They may be referring to something like a solid-state flash disk; SanDisk, anyone? O/T: I've seen IBM full-height drives still run after a fifteen foot fall from the second floor landing onto concrete. I had to replace the lower daughterboard, as it was crushed into PCB dust, but the mechanism itself survived with only a bent surround.. When IBM says 100G, they mean it!
.sig: Now legally binding!
"Yeah, my playstation is making a funny grinding noise..."
"You'll have to replace your harddrive, sir."
"How do I do that?"
"You bring it into the shop and they'll charge you $$$ for the drive, and $$$ for installation and $$$ for not knowing any better..."
'cause not every video game enthusiast is tech savy.
BlackNova Traders
Think about it for a moment.
* First you would need to build a cross-compiler that compiles for the PS2's CPU
* Next you would have to get it onto the PS2 somehow. You can't just go into Easy CD Creator and burn a CD for it. Obviously Sony is probably using a proprietry CD format which hasn't been implemented into a CD burning application
* There probably is a keyboard for the PS2, but even with this the kernel would need to be rewritten to support it.
* No Ethernet in it, so it's only suitable for servers which don't get enough traffic to fill a 56k line
Put all that together and you'll find that you need a lot of Coca-Cola (maybe by injection) in order to make this worthwile.
--
Vote for mind21_98 this November!
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
I can't see the point of it : wouldn't a cheap console be better for simple gaming ?
This isn't supposed to connect you to the internet. I'd be suprised if it even had a web browser. The modem is there to set up up for multiplayer games and the hard drive is there to more effectively store saved games. Previously, storing data onto those memory chips would have been difficult to work around- you'ld only be granted a very small amount of space.
Additionally, the processor is extremely well for rendering for games. It is not well designed to deal with normal day to day functions. There is no real use for slapping on a keyboard because the machine really isn't designed to deal with that sort of thing.
Remember, this box is only going for $200 or whatever. There is only so much you can do with that kind of budget.
No, no, no! No offense, but you just don't get it. I used to be a hardcore console gamer several a few years ago. It might seem strange to the tech-heads here, but the way the console game industry works is different than the computer game industry.
As a console gamer and developer, if the system doesn't come with a harddrive or a modem or whatever peripherial, then they do not exist, period. Sure, Sony themselves could sell an official harddrive addon and an official modem addon, but almost every developer and gamer will act as if they do not exist. Its the all-in-one-shrinkwrapped-box theory of the console game industry.
They key to the console industry is that you have fixed hardware. So this pretty much rules out most peripherial components. I could name tons of examples with past console systems... but I will let you do your homework on that, if you need.
Lets all hope that the harddrive and modem for the PSX2 don't mean that console game developers will develop buggy games like most computer game developers.
Why does a game console need a harddrive?
:)
Faster access time? You know these win/dos games that have that full-super-install that copies everything (including FMV stuff) to the hard drive to speed things up? I have no idea how fast a dvd-drive is, is a goodish hard drive faster?
A cache for web access? A big memory card could do this, or using free memory+compression would work. But even a big cache doesn't make a dent in 8 GB.
Storing drivers/other data that would usally be on a mem card? This seems most likely. But 8 GB seems like overkill.
Ripping a DVD to the hard drive and then using the ports to copy it to another drive? Nah.
Wait. If this thing is so close in power to a "standard PC", a hard drive could store work. Just add a keyboard and type up your term paper by staring at your fuzzy tv for hours. Ick.
Any other ideas?
Does this mean they weren't planning on shipping with a modem previous to this? That doesn't make sense. They would be at an enourmous disadvantage against Dreamcast in the online gaming arena. Surely Sony realizes that online is the future of gaming. Even Microsoft realizes that. Microsoft has enough vision (!) to include an ethernet adapter with their upcoming console. Does the Japanese PS2 not have a modem? Did Sony not think online gaming has a future? Or is Sony one of those greedy companies that want you to waste $100 on their "special" PS2 modem? I find it hard to believe that Sony had not planned on shipping built in modem with their new console. Idiotic
"At last the console manufacturers seem to be catching onto the idea of online gaming. Everyone and their online dog know the future is broadband so it's not difficult to see how Sony can exploit this with their Playstation. Welcome
news indeed - let's just hope someone can produce some decent games."
Online gaming is something that really isn't a terribly good idea for several reasons:
1. Point of control/failure.
I don't like the idea of someone else holding my "game" and having to have control over it. I want to access my game from anywhere and without a net connection of any sort. If their server goes down, they go out of business, or make another product that superceedes the current one your our of luck.
2. Cost
When I buy a game I want to have that game for the rest of my life without extra cost. With these things they will most likely cost and I don't want that.
3. Interactivity dosn't take the place of a real isolated program that is done well.
Just because you can't code your way out of a paper bag dosn't mean that I have to look at some shitty program that just has multiplayer capabilities built into it.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I've been modem free for seven months now. Why the hell would I want to go back? They'd better off putting in an ethernet NIC of some sort and providing a way of setting up an IP address either static and/or dynamic. I would want to plug this into the switch on my LAN so that it can use my DSL connection (which BTW uses the crappy PPPoE protocol). It would also need some way for me to configure proxy settings too, although playing around with NAT tables I can handle, unlike the average consumer.
Modem? Bah! Nasty evil thing that should be thrown out with floppy drives. Shame we couldn't start the new century without them.
Quite possibly - as a matter of fact the PSX 1 development kit uses GCC as it's compiler! doesn't that mean there's already GPL code that targets the PSX. My bet is the PSX2 dev kit will ship with GCC also. I'm a little shocked no one has ported linux to their PSX. Although with a hard drive and a modem, it'll suddenly be useful to be running linux on it. :)
By the way: Screw hopes for an ethernet card by default - that can be bought seperately and use with the USB port. The important thing is that if the system comes with a default modem installed, more games will take advantage of it; then when you buy your ethernet adapter, there will games for it. If it doesn't come with either then games won't come with networking either. :(
Now if only Sony could figure out that a default of 2 controllers aren't enough. Not enough games come out with 4 player modes for the PSX because the system only has two ports standard. And a few too many games that say they support the 4player multitap don't work well with the tap!
Joseph Elwell.
Sony has stated in the past that they wouldn't be shipping a modem because it didn't make sense to slap such outdated technology on a machine as cutting edge as the PS2. They're waiting for more people to get DSL or cable modems.
The PS2 case has already been designed and is in production. Is Sony really going to start over on this now?
There's no purpose for a hard drive. The Sony Network isn't ready yet. No online games are in development. People are writing games for 32MB RAM and a huge DVD. What is a hard drive going to add to the mix that will justify the significant extra cost? It would be cheaper to just add another 32MB of memory, or to double the VRAM.
Hard drives are a consumer nightmare: relatively high failure rate, not suited to being kicked around in a console.
On the other hand, a US release date for the PS2 hasn't been announced yet, so anything is possible.
The HD is not necessarily for the games; the downloaded content that Sony and licensees would market, such as new songs for Bust a Groove 3, or more maps for Final Fantasy X Online, or music videos to go with James Bond:Whatever the Sequel is Titled, etc.
It's primarily a preemptive strike against M$ if it does come out, but it's not like you'd need it yet either.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I mean, they aren't marketing it as such. You're not supposed to do your taxes on it, you're not going to program a QuakeIII mod on it, you won't be doing AV stuff on it...
It's meant as an entertainment device first, and a computational device second, even though there are definite overlaps.
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Sony obviously wants the PS2 to be the centerpiece in any home's audiovisual entertainment center. So what has this to do with the extra hardware?
Simple!
Sony sees this huge,untapped market for distributing MP3s over the internet! I mean, what else do 12 year olds do nowadays besides play video games, right? And as we all know, it takes quite a bit of HD space to hold a substantial amount of MP3s...so voila! Sony is set and poised to become an MP3 power...
Coming soon...Sony's buyout of Napster, and the addition of banner advertising...a la ICQ!
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
If they do add the modem and hard drive to the US version, won't that effectively split the market for the game designers? Now they can either write a game that doesn't use the modem and drive storage, so that international release is limited to PAL/NTSC changes and language translation. Or, they can write the game to use the modem and hard drive in the US, and have to dummy down the game or not release it at all internationally.
It seems that for game platforms, creating multiple configurations will fragment your market and give an advantage to a competitor who has the same configuration accross all markets.
If they do add the modem and hard drive, I hope they make a low cost add-on available to the Japan version that is functionally compatible so that they don't suffer from having multiple variants of the console in different markets.
I had generally heard estimates of $300 for the US lauch of the PS2. But with this news, I have to think that the launch price will be closer to $400.
Although I agree that having some sort of on-line gaming ability built in is a really good idea, wonder how well that balances out against the loss in sales from the higher price. I think $300 is supposed to be the price at which the mass market generally starts accepting a component, and even though the PS2 looks fantastic there are probably a lot of people who won't buy one at $400.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah I guess I don't really know about that. See most companies like to betray people with massive inefficient code that breaks almost all computers.
What exactly is Half Life about? What makes it so good? What about online play is any different from the usual fare about having things where you see how quickly you can kill your fellow players and the like.
Playing online has never been very fun for me at all (when I can find a computer that isn't mine that can actually do anything). The whole idea makes me sick. I am tired of playing people who kick my ass 700 times before I fall to the ground. To me the concept of playing against others is a rather bad idea. I don't want to play a game I can't win. I don't want to fight a game that I never can do anything with.
A good example for you:
Starcraft. Ok I get the shareware version and play the entire thing all the way through in a college cumputer lab. That was somewhat challenging and I rather enjoyed it. Next I decide to try to play some multiplayer stuff on the net. Well after several days I hadn't won a single game with large ammounts of time dedicated to this.
I didn't win a damn one. Not only this but I wasn't enjoying it much at all (you should know how it feels to loose).
I tried almost every conceivable military tactical strategy that I had heard published and some of the stuff from the Art of War. Nothing helps. I almost never win anything.
Second example:
Quake III arena. This game obviously was on a better machine that I didn't own as well. I started playing the damn thing and for the life of me I never seemed to avoid death or deliver any death to almost anyone. Nothing worked at all. Seemed that it was an impossibility.
Now maybe I am "ignorant" but this dosn't seem like something I would want to do for free and especially not for a fee.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Where do you get that the PS2 runs a Linux kernel? I think you're smokin bad hash man.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
For anyone that was paying attention, the Dreamcast has a modem which is attached to an expansion port. This means (put on your thinking caps) you can *remove* it and add an Ethernet or Firewire adapter to this so-called expansion port. Having an expansion port is a good thing because you can attach anything you like to it as long as you pack it with a driver disk. I think the expansion port is a much much better idea than hardwiring a modem into the DC for the very reason that more people are getting xDSL and cable access. If Sony has a smart set of fellows working for them they will do something similar, hopefully even make the hard drive an option. They could just ship the PS2 with an expansion bay you COULD stick a hard drive into, it would keep the price down and give them some room to expand.
As an aside I was thinking about Sony and what their plans might be for the future, I'm thinking after the PS2 has been out for a year or two, maybe three, they're going to start building VAIO PCs and laptops based around the EE (maybe with some modifications to make it a little more general purpose) and some of the PS2's architecture. Right now they are making a run for consumer's living rooms and the next logical step would be the office. The PCs they sell now are Intel's bitches and in many ways are being held back by Intel and x86. Don't give me crap about Itanium, the EE is out NOW not sometime next year. The EE would be a real boon to Sony in the audio/visual editing department considering audio and video filters are just a bunch of operations performed on the samples or pixels (the vector units on that puppy would tear through high demand video filters). The PS2 is primarily a gaming machine but I think it's secondary objective is to test out some architectural ideas. Sony might even try to poise itself as the next decade's SGI. That's just my five pesos.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Ethernet would be an exelent addition to the PS2. Think about it. Lets say that you want to play final fantasy 11 (which is going to be entirely online) but you don't want to pay for some outrageous phoneline-connection to the game network. Alternative? Plug in some ethernet cable, and hook it up to your LAN at home. Voila, instant connection to the game server (and many others) all with one simple cable.
It would be very wise for Sony to do this, and support connecting as I described... but of course, we all know what they are after. The buck always stops here. *sigh* Never know though. Heck, if PS2 comes with ethernet, I think it would be damn cool. I'd love to hook my playstation to my LAN at home.
Fran Frisina (franf@hhs.net)
http://www.zero-productions.com/money
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
I've had a different multiplayer experience. The first true multiplayer computer game I ever played was Quake... loved it as a single player game then I played on the internet and was killed constantly. Then I discovered an internet cafe in my town that had weekly tournaments, which I frequented regularly... Just a fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. Slowly I got better.
About the same time, my friends and I discovered to joys of Red Alert and Warcraft II on a Lan. Thus far, I had found multiplayer gaming, LAN-style to be awesome and internet to be lacking.
After this, I became a Quake II fanatic, writing console scripts for myself and others, making skins and levels, etc... I found playing Quake online to be fun... Not a replacement for the single player game, however- I don't like this multi-player only trend... It's fun, to log on, play for like half an hour, kill a bit, get killed, whatever. And since it's a FPS you don't get all the disadvantages that RTS games have in online play (I'm getting to that).
RTS games, in my experience are something you play with friends. I've played Starcraft extensively with friends and kids I've taught at a computer camp and am pretty god at it. I love to play, but online... There are just too many groups of people who form a game just to stomp on the one or two guys in the game they don't know.
I think a console online multiplay option would be good for many games... Imagine being able to fight a REAL, single elimination tournament in a fighting game. I mean, most fighting games already have very little single-player content, so they'd be perfect for this. There could be a tournament running constantly. The winners would get their names up on the game's web site for a week or something... Or maybe every month, the person who wins the most tournaments wins a tshirt or other prize. The money lost on prizes and keeping the server running would be offset by the fact that the company would be developing a community of fans for _it's_ brand of fighting game...
I think online play will be good for the consoles, not replacing the single player mode, but simply adding a new mode...
Josh Sisk
It shouldn't *MATTER* to the games programmer whether or not they are doing their network code over a Modem line, or using the local LAN port.
This is what device drivers are for.
And this is *far* more important an issue than whether or not the PSX2 ships with a LAN card or modem out of the box... yet nobody is really looking at this, because the OS part of these consoles is not subject to the same sort of review that OS's like Windows or Linux are.
Microsoft's X-Box presumably is designed around the same concepts of modern OS technology, with a driver layer between the API and the wire. This may in fact be to their advantage, because it means that developers can write software without having to worry about whether or not a particular peripheral is installed - this task should be a function of the OS, not the App (Game).
So in my opinion, its more relevant to investigate whether or not the PSX2 gaming API's are device-agnostic due to a well written (and well supported) device driver layer from Sony... because if this is *not the case* (as in the past, with the PSX2), then X-Box has a leg up on PSX2...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It's hard disk, not hard drive, dammit!
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
It's this close to being an iMac DV ^^;
DVD support, Firewire support, USB support, decent PSX compatibility(with CVGS), and a modem. In one unit.
It'd be amusing if Apple released a iBox or something; a headless iMac for use with TV or monitor, with a G4 processor and AltiVec, for $500 or something. Then the biggest difference would be market targetting of the devices.
Of course, the iBox would have ethernet support over the PSX2 modem, and the PSX2 would have better controllers and peripherals(unless they were USB... then switch and plug!)
Just random rambling on my part
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Actually no. The SNES CDROM was being developed by Sony in response the SegaCD. Near the end of the project, Nintendo backed out and went with Philips (that project didn't come to anything either.) Pissed off, Sony added some stuff to the design, came out with the Playstation, and ate Nintendo's lunch. If anything, its is Nintendo that did the screwing, not Sony.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
An ethernet card is not necessary for something that has firewire. You can set up a firewire network that approaches the speed of 100mpbs ethernet. Sony actually already does this in their VAIO line of desktop PCs.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm sorry, but families with three kids and income of less than $20k don't have dsl or cablemodems. But, I bet they will have PS2s... Many of them will, at least. The modem is a way to lure families who can't afford computers or DSL/cable onto their ISP.
Josh Sisk
Here is where you are mistaken -
Several aftermarket add-ons have been successful - the Sega CD, Jaguar CD, Light Guns, the Nintendo 64 4MB Memory Pak, Sony Multitap, and Nintendo 64 Rumble Paks. It is quite possible to create accessories that developers use, they just have to be worthwhile. The Famicom Disk and the Sattelaview for the Famicom and Super Famicom were unsuccesful since no one was interested in downloading text games from satellite or in a format that offered no advantages over the cartridge. Similarly, I would be surprised if the Nintendo Robot offered anything to anyone. Lots of failed add-ons exist (Sega 32X), but in general, if there is enough of a use for hardware add-on, developers will support it at least secondarily.
However, internet support is a massive add-on that is very worthwhile - plus, if you are developing a multi-player game, adding in support for broadband internet access is pretty easy. Since Sony has refused to allow a modem connection for the PS2, developers will NOT need to worry about optimizing network code for high-latency low-bandwidth connections, so adding internet support to Gran Turismo 2001 or Madden 2002 won't be terribly time-consuming. Net games are already in development for the PS2 (Final Fantasy XI, anyone?)... I doubt that the internet add-on will be anything but successful.
As for the hard drive... From what I've read of Sony's white papers, the HD is not designed for heavy games use. Sony envisions a broadband network where you can setup the PS2 to download a DVD movie while you play Tekken, and cache it on the hard drive, or store tons of MP3s. Its use will be primarily as multimedia storage for the internet/application side of the PS2, not for gaming. It will be a convenience for the PS2 owner, not the console developer, so it should be reasonably successful - especially for people who don't own computers and use the PS2 as their primary internet device.
Also, all current information points to an external 50GB+ Firewire hard disk released at the same time a PCMCIA Ethernet card is released - early 2001. Sony is already losing enough money on every PS2 that they sell to include $200 more hardware in the box.
My guess is that sony plans a launch of the system in two versions, one with modem & hard drive, one without. This way, you can legitimately say 'So the X-box has feature y? Got that, and a years worth head start...' while still offering a 'value-priced' console for people who don't need feature y.
Remember, the NES was released in two versions- the Super Mario Bros. version, and the Duck Hunt/Gyromite versions, so there's a good precedent to follow here... A hard drive and modem sounds much cooler than a 'Robotic Operating Buddy', though I don't know if you could have convinced me of that 15 years ago...
But I'm older and wiser now, and have learned to steer clear of the R.O.B.'s of the world... wait a second... What did you say CmdrTaco's real name was?
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