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PS3 Release Not Until 2006, PSX Firmware Upgrade?
Thanks to GamePro for its coverage of a Famitsu interview from former Sony CTO Nobuichi Okamoto, discussing the PlayStation 3. Okamoto, who is still involved in the Cell project (which will power the PS3) to some degree, notes: "Development of the Cell started in spring of 2001 as a 5-year project. Hence the project will end in spring of 2006. Although it is not known whether or not game consoles will be sold immediately, we can expect products using the Cell chip to start emerging around that time." He also suggests 2004 may not see any console announcements from Sony: "From my experience, to produce games on new hardware it takes at least a year to research the hardware and to start planning for software titles. If at this time the software production environment is not ready, I think it will be difficult to announce new hardware this year." Elsewhere, Sony has announced a downloadable firmware upgrade for its Japanese-released PSX 'media center', which "returns most of the promised features that were cut shortly before the system's release."
When intel decided to design the successor to the 486 they started two teams (not nessicarly at the same time). One team went for a quick powerful release and made the Pentimum chip. The other went for a longer release and made the Pentimun pro chip (which eventially became the PII and PIII after some latter additions)
It takes a long time to design new chips. What would be interesting is if the rumor mill suggested that sony was starting a design team now. Such would imply the PS3 would have a shorter life, to be replaced in 3 years (as opposed to the usual 5) with a PS4.
The X Box is likely to be released around the same timeframe, (in time for Christmas 05 if they are lucky otherwise early O6). Nintendo is planning to have something definitely in the 2005 timeframe. You'll know they are close when current generation hardware prices fall to $99, figure about a year or so at that point.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
A major key factor for the PS2's success was that it was backwards compatible with PS1 games. So if you had a PS1, it was a no-brainer to get the PS2. And if you didn't, you knew that the PS2 would play all those cool games that your friends had, so you picked it up.
If the PS3 is backwards compatible with the PS2 & PS1, I think it will do pretty well.
Backwards compatibility is starting to get important for the console manufacturers. The N64 was NOT backwards compatible with anything, and so it was harder to get moving. Nowadays, the lack of backwards compatibility will slow down adoption (note that Mac OS X; Windows XP, etc all have some form of backwards compatibility.)
Fellowship 9/11