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PlayStation 3 Press Conference Tonight

The official unveiling of the PlayStation 3 is set to happen tonight, with folks such as the Guardian Gamesblog, Kotaku, and GamesAreFun live blogging the event as it happens. From the Guardian post: "The sign on the way into the Sony Press Conference is big - Wi-Fi access will be only available after the event. They lied - a quick wireless search has found me some access and now I'm on. The clock says 1.00pm but my body says 9pm. By the time Microsoft unveils the 360 again tonight I'll be ready for my cornflakes."

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Next Xbox Hard To Program? by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "the PS3 is cell, and heavily vectorized, an unknown architecture."
    Cell is also PowerPC and vectorized architectures are actually pretty common. MMX, SSE, AltaVec, Cray supercomputers...
    The three cores in the Xbox 360 kind of bug me. For some reason I think SMP should go up by powers of 2. I mean I have seen 2 cpu, 4 cpu, 8 cpu, 16cpu, 32 cpu ... systems but never 3 cpu, or 5 cpu systems. I have to wonder if one of the PPC cores is dedicated to some type of special task.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  2. Re:Specs by Andy_R · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interesting... samne clock and ram size as the Xbox360 (if I recall correctly?) but 2.18 claimed teraflops versus 1.0 for the Xbox. Surprised not to see UMD in the list of supprted formats.

    Where are you getting this info from? The 3 links in the article are unupdated, 1 line of hype and refusing to serve pages respectively, plus engadget and gizmondo are dead too.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  3. Two (!) HDMI Ports! by Alzheimers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From FirstAdopter.com

    AV Output
    Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
    HDMI: HDMI out x 2
    Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
    Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1


    Two HDMI out ports? If the PS3 can drive two displays, that would explain the support for the seven bluetooth controllers. I wonder what kind of performance hit that would mean, at 1080p x2

    PS3: lanparty in a box!

  4. Re:some early info by jessecurry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    a little more blunt than I would've been, but after seeing the information about the PS3 it's really true.
    I know that the quality of games will end up being the real factor, but given Sony's track record I wouldn't expect anything but a good number of solid games. Plus the backwards compatibility will mean that the console will launch with a large number of great games anyways. I didn't pick up one of the current generation consoles (ps2, xbox) but now that I have a little more free time I think that I'll be getting one of these and from what I see my choice will be the PS3. Not only does it look to be the most powerful, but I'll be able to catch up on all of those PS2 games that I missed.

    --
    Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
  5. Re:This is impressive by cgenman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On the one hand, you have a point. People came down harder on Microsoft than was justified by the quite reasonable specs they announced, with the system setup that looked pretty darned good.

    On the other hand, that special was in many ways just plain insulting. It really gave The Wizard a run for it's money. Lucas would be proud.

    It looks like neither of the two (Sorry Nintendo) major players have slipped up. Both are using sleek 'n sexy wireless controllers that may actually justify the cost of 1st party controllers. They both have detachable HDD options (remember kiddies, so did the PS2 and look where that went). Microsoft sensibly put their memory card ports back onto their machines, and Sony now appears to be supporting actual real memory cards. The PS3 also happens to look lickably good, whereas the Microsoft console looks much better than the Xbox (though kind of resembles a blob of ice cream).

    On the other hands, both systems have achilles heels. They both are going to be a pain to develop for, what with multiple memory speeds, multiple processors, etc etc. One word: ouch. The 360 has all sorts of "Live" functionality requirements that will drive development costs up a bit, but more than that will drive developers up walls. The PS3's 8 processors-on-a-die looks like it's going to continue the PS2's legendary ease-of-programming and development [/scarcasm]. Backwards compatibility of the PS3 is a good trend, though it probably won't make or break the system. And not that I'm partial or anything, but I really wish the cameras had come standard with the consoles. It has to come standard if it's going to get used.

    It looks like both systems are pretty easily matched. I eagerly await Nintendo's announcement.

    Full Disclosure - I'll probably buy a PS3. If it comes out in a year and a half, that will be about the time that my latest PS2 craps out.