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Sony Announces a Super Playstation 2, the "PSX"
Doctor_No writes "Sony has announced a souped-up Playstation 2 in Japan. The machine, named the "PSX", comes with 120GB hard drive and a DVD+/-RW for recording videos and DVR features much like
Sony's Cocoon.
The machine will be released sometime in 2003, and come with a service that offers multimedia content such as video and music through internet
connectivity. If you live in Japan, it will also come with a BS
tuner; which is a Japanese Satellite Broadcast tuner. The new
machine also boasts a real-time OS, USB 2.0, Memorystick slot, and a
connection with Sony's Portable handheld, the "PSP".
UBS Warburg has an article here,
but these two Japanese sites offer better information (albeit in
Japanese); Watch
Impress, ZDnet
Japan. Here is a rather large PDF presentation."
Anyone foresee this problem?
120GB HDD + DVD-R/RW + Mod Chip = a PS2 that will make copies of it's games for you.
If you add into the equation the multimedia via internet connectivity, it sounds like you've got a multi-purpose piracy machine.
Mike
In my line of work, I wish I had one of those.
Beautiful...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Playstation 2's!
English versions of the japanese sites
1. PSX, the Playstation 2 with 120GB HD, DVD+/-RW, USB 2.0 and more, is released.
2. A modchip is released.
3. Linux is installed on it.
4. Everyone slowly realizes it's really a computer. YOU GUYS!!!
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
This just became my number one desire in the world. Even above a job. Even above sex with another person. Even above a job having sex with another person
I couldn't find anywhere that it included i.Link?Firewire. I find it hard to believe that Sony would make a multimedia product that didn't have a port or two
Maybe I just need to brush up on my Japanese.
Time for a cold shower...
i have never seen anything inhuman that sexy (in fact sexier then some females.. trust me)
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Second Playstation: PS2
Third Playstation: PSX
I can't wait to try out the new "PS2" when it's released in 2005!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
The 120gig Harddrive is nice. Anyone know if this is the size for the HD they announced this year at E3 for existing PS2s?
What with PSX being the code for the original PlayStation format, isn't this going to get a little confusing?
Or is that only a British thing?
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
If you live in Japan, it will also come with a BS tuner;
It gets Fox News?
of all these products that have an X in their name. Just count me out; I won't be buying one.
One Xhausted and Xasperated consumer.
Irritating, isn't it?
Sony has beat MS to the punch again. We know that Xbox 2 was meant a home media center. Now Sony has one that does more then Xbox 2 was planned to have(mainly the DVD burner). Plus its practacly a home computer.
I can't wait unti the PSX has an office suite and CUPS print drivers.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I think it is a good idea, I would like a combined console, sat. reciever, tv recorder in one package. One could fear that such a box would be too expensive, but couldn't that be solved by making it so you could upgrade it with the diffent features.
Another problem would be the TV recording feature, I fear that it would not be available in my country to get tv listings for it. It could be solved by having a subscription service that was independent of the manufacturer of the box. But I guess they wouldn't do that unless the company that makes the box got a percentage of the subscription fee. Well, the possibilities are endless..
my sig
Microsoft have been outdone by far. Well done Sony.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
It's about time they put a Memory Stick slot on those things. Sony put them on everything else they make.
I hope they move to using Memory Sticks for saved game storage, instead of having to buy another special card for the next console. It never made sense to me that on one hand, they're pushing these things as your personal magic solution to portable storage, then not use them on one of their biggest products.
Wasting your time since 1997.
The only way an OS is going to work properly on this box is if it's got as heck of a lot more RAM.
Is the fusion of gaming and general electrnoics the wave of the future? What's the point of this device, exactly? I can already do all of this stuff with my PC. Indeed, if the intention of this product is to be a PC alternative, then what about a keyboard and mouse?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
They do have different game titles....
So one maybe faster than the other (hardware wise) but just saying one is better is also trying to say that the games for the GameCube are better than that of the Playstation 2......which doesn't make sense because you can't really compare two completely different games....
They are both very awesome in there own respects......You have to give Sony some credit for being innovative...No other systems have DVD+RW yet....
If I want a DVD-R i would bought one. So you would rather spend the same amount of money on something that has less actual applications...hmm...burn dvds...or burn dvds and be able to surf the web encode movies play games...and all kinds of other things that it is going to be able to do....
jC - sweet sweet squirrel on sheet metal
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does it play games?
Fox news tells it like it is, you just don't want to hear it.
This is bizarre, because all of the listed Playstation One games at work (electronics retailer) are under the three-letter abbreviation PSX, so I always think of PSX as the first one. So this seems old, not new!! Does anyone else find it weird that Sony is super protective of all its copyrighted stuff, and yet keeps coming out with mp3 players, DVD burners, and more and more ways to share multimedia files?
The articles state that the PSX would probably come out in the US in 2004. Given that the next generation of consoles is slated to arrive in 2004-2005, it seems strange that they would spend extra money on a redesign of the PS2 instead of putting their resources into the PS3.
The possibilities seem to be 1) This machine is a test bed for many of the technologies they plan to put in the PS3, and they want to use the PSX as a dry run, 2) They plan to come to market late with the PS3, and this is a stopgap measure, or 3) They're morons, and are spending all of this money to release a dated gaming system (with nifty bells and whistles) just as consumers have started salivating over the next generation.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
I can already see people selling PSXes on eBay, taking advantage of the name confusion.
Here's what I'm curious about:
Most of the buzz on the PS3 indicates that it will be arriving in 2005. So why come out with a "Super PS2" in 2004 that will do all sorts of cool things (though, I'm certainly hoping "transferring memory data from standard PS2 memory card to memory stick/hard drive is one of them - I hate buying those things)?
I'm just weird enough that I'd want to wait the extra year and see if there's a PS3 and a "Super PS3" for 2005 - if you want to play games for $300, get a PS3, if you want to play games, record DVD's, have Tivo like abilities, etc, etc, etc, get the Super PS3.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Sony held a press conference on the 28th to present their 2003 corporate direction. President Kutaragi announced their new platform, the PSX. It is planned to be released domestically within the year, with a North American and European release following in 2004.
The PSX uses the same chips and OS as the PS2. It will be a new platform providing not only gaming capabilities, but also containing a TV/BS analog tuner and delivering DVD recording functionality and acting as a 120GB HDD recorder.
In addition to a slot-in type DVD+-RW/-R, it also has a Memory Stivk slot, an Ethernet port and a USB2.0 port.
The company declared that they "aim to take advantage of the combination of electronics and gaming, and through the use of the most advanced semiconductor technology for game machines and a real-time OS, we plan to deliver this high quality, high speed response DVD/HDD recorder within the year."
Kutaragi said the X is intended to indicate the machine's "crossover" role between digital home electronics and gaming, as well as show their enthusiasm for the "eXtreme" nature of this ultimate expression of the PS2 platform. He also provided a demonstration of the machine.
In the demo, he displayed the machine's newly-developed interfaces, and showed it conducting video playback. He demonstrated the highly responsive menu system in an attempt to refute the reputation digital home electronics have for slowness. He explained, "we have been thinking about how far we can take the PS2 engine as a home electronics device, and we wished to demonstrate how much we can change digital home electronics by using this engine."
In addition, he demonstrated the machine's interface as a photo server and discussed the machine's attractiveness as a digital media server.
No details were given of the machine's implementation of I/O ports and recording methods, but regarding DRM, he said, "it is a very serious problem. Protecting the rights of copyright holders is important, but at the same time users desire to be able to enjoy (it) easily and conveniently." In order to fulfill these requirements, he explained that the latest DRM technology would be used. "We are thinking of including a signal in the analog output to prevent copying", he said, and regarding digital broadcasts, explained that "the industry has not yet come to a consensus, so we are intending to include a preliminary implementation."
The PSX is not a product of SCEI, but rather the BroadBand Network Company, part of the main Sony company and headed by Kutaragi. There was no comment on the price.
Maybe this is the Japanese name and they'll rebrand it for us western folks for which the original Playstation was usually called the PSX. Maybe it'll become the PS2X or something? Myself I like the name PS2 Extreme (pronounced Playstation tooooo Extreme).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
PSX? Isn't that the Playstation 1?
No, that was its development name. For some strange reason people still call it the PSX.
What is worse is that some people call the PS2 the PSX2.
Summation 2
Can anyone explain to me what a "real-time OS" is?
real-time OS
I'll be teaching remedial googling later.
The only real innovation in Xbox has been done "illegally" by modders
You mean... Running i386 Linux on i386 hardware? Hooray for innovation!
A realtime OS is one that guarantees a certain level of response time or latency - e.g., any system calls you make are guaranteed to return within a certain span, and no longer.
That's hard realtime. Soft realtime is where the OS kind of provides a certain level of response time, but once in a while might go over that limit.
The main reason that soft realtime exists is that it's a lot easier to build on anything more than rather limited or very specialized hardware.
One has to wonder how they intend to use the enhanced features. It seems to me that this configuration is a toy for technophiles, and little more. With the mix of technologies, it looks like they're trying to merge a PS2 with a PVR.
If they're smart enough to do this in the PS3, and maintain backward compatibility with PS2 and PS1, they have a strong entry into the next generation. The PS2 grabbed a lot of sales because it combined a gaming console with something many people didn't have yet, but wanted - a DVD player. This next time around, they could do that same thing with a PVR, but only if Microsoft and Nintendo don't do the same thing first. Sony stole that DVD player/game console market because they were the first to market. Microsoft offered the same functionality (albeit hamstrung out of the box), but most of the people who could be coerced to buy a game console because it would also net them a DVD player had already bought a PS2.
The more I think about it, the more this looks like a proof of concept to beta test the convergence of these technologies. This PSX is a niche product at best, but it will give them a change to iron out technical issues with the PVR/console combination so the can comfortably launch the PS3 with all of this plus a new core for the console part.
The DVD burning functionality is also an interesting cross-over play when combined with the memory stick slot - it adds a new audience. It Sony can bundle the right tools in there, users will be able to pull the memory stick out of their digital cameras (and digital videocams in the mid-term), and burn those images to a DVD. The possibilities are broad, but signs point to this being an R&D product that will be sold to niches to cover some of the R&D costs.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
but what they don't tell you is that it doesn't play games anymore.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
You mean this thing brings in slashdot?
:-)
My employer made me use this OS, what's your excuse?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
It's a Tivo, It's a Media Hub, It's a PSP sync station, it's a DVD burner, it's going to suck your Amex dry - the only problem being when you try to use it to play a game you realise it's just a PS2 which I can pick up for f'all currently. Surely once you've sunk all your cash into such a lovely beast and it's nestling beneath your TV set it's going to make you slightly reluctant to upgrade to a PS3 and lose all that lovely functionality.
I never understood why people bought All-In-Wonder Cards if they were serious game players always wanting the latest technology and I've no idea why anybody would buy this.
Games consoles are supposed to be disposable items - bought the day they came out for a reasonably large sum and forgotten in the back of your cupboard 4 years later. I don't want to have to invest in my consoles, take out finance on them etc.
Actually a thought hit me as I was typing all this, I think what Sony have just done is take a Tivo Box with a DVD burner they already had knocking about in research and plugged in the "PS2 on a chip" thingie they were banging on about recently. I suppose if the PS2 function is a freebie then it's a good enough way of getting a few potential new PS2 game customers who would never normally dream of straying into their local game shop. Sony also have a spoiler attitude, killing DC with PS2 rumours, trying to knobble GBA SP with PSP and now XBox Media thingie with this.
"...What good is a phone call, if you're unable to speak?"
What I find really interesting is whilst there is potential broadband access, and I'm sure a raft of available, DRM, Sony content, I haven't read any confermed talk of 'real' net access, or say, any unlicensed program development.
Not only are Sony beating MS to the punch with home entertainment, they are beating them to a completely closed platform - what use are bit torrent links if you have no client?
Anyone heard anything about whether this can record and play games at the same time?
Cheers,
Ian
A european release before an American one!??? That'd be a first!
the blurb from Sony talks about a 65nm fabrication process .. isn't that 0.065 um? i've lost of track of silicon nowadays but isn't that bloody tiny?
version 0.0002
Here is what I think the US machine will be like:
1. The main unit will be somewhat bigger than today's PlayStaton 2. It will use the successor to the Emotion Engine chips found on the PS2 and will have up to 512 MB of internal RAM, with 128 MB dedicated to video memory.
2. In the main unit, there will be for base units with a 120 GB hard drive, with options for up to 320 GB hard drive. They will connect to the mainboard using Serial ATA connections.
3. Also in the main unit, there will be a standard DVD recorder drive that supports the Sony/Philips DVD-RW standard, plus eventual upgrades to blue-laser optical recorder drives that can record up to 50 GB of data on a single disc.
4. The main unit will have Sony MemoryStick support for up to 2 GB MemoryStick units.
5. Finally, the main unit will sport I/O connectors for game controllers and keyboards using USB 2.0 connections, an 100-BaseT RJ-45 Ethernet connector, and IEEE-1394b connectors support connect speed twice that of today's IEEE-1394 connections. Video outputs include 480i composite video (RCA connector), S-video (S-video connector) and component video (three RCA connectors); the component video connections can be set for 480p, 720p, and 1080i output to both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio high-end CRT's and projection TV's. It may even sport a DVI digital connector and IEEE-1394b output selection for connections to future TV's that use digital video inputs for video.
6. Through a short IEEE-1394b connection, you can buy a TV tuner unit that support current NTSC analog and ATSC digital broadcasts through over-air, cable TV and direct-broadcast satellite connections. Imagine something like DirecTiVo, but with the ability to record two programs simultaneously; Sony will use its DirecTV and TiVo licenses for such a box.
In short, Sony will have what amounts to a true home entertainment center box in at most a stackable two-box unit, one that can be your DirecTV tuner, record DirecTV broadcasts, create your own DVD discs (and eventually home-made blue-laser optical discs), play PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and "PlayStation 3" games, and surf the Internet at broadband speeds. Sounds like a great idea, if only to reduce the amount of clutter for your home entertainment center.
Very creative, but utterly wrong.
It's abbreviated to PSX because the Playstation is desended from the failed Super NES CD.
Alongside the SNES add-on, Sony were going to launch their own "SNES CD" without a cart slot which would be called "Playstation X". The product name stuck right up until the launch of the 32-bit box of tricks we now know when the X was dropped.
But the apprev stuck.
There are non-Sony Memory Sticks, and as for devices - there certainly are third party readers (mainly all-in-one USB devices for every format under the sun) so Sony can't be too mean about letting people use the format.
Look, I really do agree that it'd be nicer if they went with something like CompactFlash, but the main thing that really mystifies me is that they've got this whole Memory Stick thing going on, but didn't use it in one of the most obvious places.
Wasting your time since 1997.
Ever heard of USB?
Yes, the PlayStation and Xbox both have USB, but do the first-person shooters for those consoles let me use a keyboard and mouse plugged into the console? Or should shooter fans stick with a PC?
The "original" PS1 was a Japanese SNES with a CD drive.
Was that ever sold to the public? From what I read in Nintendo Power and elsewhere, Nintendo dropped out of that project before it was completed after seeing how Sega CD developers failed to explore what the CD-ROM format could do other than streaming background music and FMV.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There are crap games on every system. Just because a publisher has a lot of money doesn't mean that its developers will create a fun game.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Here are some pictures of the PSX's main menu screen taken from a news
segment that Fuji television in Japan aired (Quiter
and ZDnet).
The images show how you will be able to navigate content stored on your
HDD, DVD, as well as content offered from online places like Sony Music.
The menu offers 3D "Jog-style" navigation. The article also has a quote from
Sony executives saying that the PSX will be the "Home Server" for it's consumers
and be a global product (with releases scheduled in the US and Europe).
When did the word Christian become a bad word? If you want to belittle Christianity you should at least read the Gospel, and if you read just the book of John (which you could read in 15 minutes), I think you would not think of Christianity in the same light.
You will notice that my post got a score of -1, Flamebait -- I guess the moderators on slashdot didn't like what I said.
They're in a weird situation where they can't release the cool new devices for listening to music and video that other companies are, because they're percieved as encouraging piracy, and movies & videos is where Sony makes the money. Sony MP3 players suck because of the hostile DRM check-in/check-out system. Even minidisc.org peoples (a cult audience for sure) are ready to ditch MDs, frustrated by having to workaround the check-in system, and that you can't upload (when many MD users like bootlegging)
This (and more especially, the PSP) seem like an attempt to use the insanely positive perception of their Playstation to piggyback onto other formats - for instance, the PSP will be released at the same time as a media player, which plays music/video off the little discs.
By itself, the PSP shouldn't be a good format - you can't record to it, it doesn't have the information of a DVD-Audio or SACD, and by the time it comes out, smart media cards will be both smaller and hold more information. Sony's hoping people buy the PSP and its audio discs because they like that it's Sony, rather than quality of the product, and the dominant format will be a DRM one.
This new product seems like it will be one of many by the time it reaches America - except, it'll have tighter DRM, and Sony controls it. A hard drive and a DVD writer. A start-up company could release one of these next month.
Personally I don't think either scheme will work - it's more a desperate move by a company that's doing bad business, has promised in two years to do amazing business (a promise recieved skeptically by analysts), and has its hands tied by conflicting interests in its unprofitable hardware business, and its profitable software business.
I'm not a Sony expert or whatever, but I have friends who work for Sony Japan, I read minidisc.org, and one can't help but hear about them. The general positivity of this discussion is annoying. Sony is no better than the often-targetted MS, they just have better marketing.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I live in the midwest too, i'm not rich or an elitest but FOX news definately doesn't have a liberal slant. BUT it has a huge conservative slant (crazy conservative) compared to any liberal slant other news stations have. I am surrounded by moderate republicans (Dublin, OH) and few liberals. All of us are usually disgusted by Fox News.
Hmmm... Pie...