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Sony Announces PS3 Slim, Price Cut, Improvements To Home
Sony's press conference today at the Gamescom convention was full of announcements. They officially revealed the PS3 Slim, which will be 36% lighter and 33% smaller than the normal PS3. It will come with a 120 GB hard drive and list for $299 when it hits retail stores in early September. Normal PS3s will drop to that price as well starting tomorrow. (Unfortunately for Sony, their unveiling was spoiled a bit by several retailers jumping the gun on new advertisements, not to mention the rumors that had been swirling for weeks ahead of time.) Sony also announced a PS3 firmware update as well as new features and customization options for Home. In addition to that, the PS3 and PSP will be getting a digital reader service. At launch it will bring access to Marvel comic books, and will expand from there. They didn't talk much about their upcoming motion control scheme, but promised more details next month at the Tokyo Game Show.
"Removal of 'Install Other OS' feature
The new PS3 system will focus on delivering games and other entertainment content, and users will not be able to install other Operating Systems to the new PS3 system."
http://www.scee.presscentre.com/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=4842&NewsAreaID=2
Sony abandoning Linux on new skus means they are effectively doing the same for the old ones.
Epic failure.
Considering that PS2s are still selling (strangely) well and getting new game releases, it's unlikely Sony will restore BC (even if only software emulation) to the PS3 platform. We'll probably see it return around the time they EOL the PS2 platform completely (once the PS3's successor is out.)
Although I'm not sure that holds water, at least if they're still selling the PSOne, which I think they are...
Just seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot by not offering backwards compatibility with the PS2. The PS2 has a huge library and dominated the console market for its generation.
They did on the early models. They yanked it out of a later revision (a month before I was going to buy one, amusingly enough).
Find a used CECHA01 (that's the serial number that has hardware backward compatibility).
Yes, I now own two PS3's. The CECHA01 runs a little hotter and slightly noisier, but I mostly fixed that by changing the thermal paste on it - heck, the warranty was void anyway.
ZOMG NERD ALERT!!
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I've got Linux on mine, but I haven't had a chance to use it much. The annoying thing is that there's no real equivalent to a bootloader. If you set it to boot Linux, it will always boot to Linux until you boot the PS3 "Game OS", at which point it will always boot Game OS until you explicitly change it again. Makes it annoying to experiment with when the kids use it, too.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
So, new changes coming to Home. More customization options. More places. Neat, I guess.
Except for the part where they apparently think people are willing to pay $0.29 for a pair of shoes that no one is going to see. Likewise the $5 to buy a new "personal apartment" that basically no one except yourself is ever going to see. (Sure, you can invite friends over to your virtual apartment but, really, how much is it worth to have your virtual self live in the Ghostbusters station?)
Not to mention the charges on logo-ed shirts. I can't remember prices, but I think those were in the $0.50-$1 range. So I'm expected to pay money to be a walking virtual advertisement. Sure...
If the Home avatars had any use outside of Home (like the Miis and the Xbox Live Avatars) I could almost see the more pathetic fanboys paying money to dress them up in a T-shirt with a Ghostbuster logo on it. But $0.50 for a virtual shirt that can only be seen in a single virtual space in which there is essentially nothing to do? Please!
Last time I checked (which was a month ago, so not terribly long ago) PlayStation Home was still just like this Penny Arcade cartoon. The only difference I found from the beta last year is that the stores now actually sell something rather than being completely empty.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I've got one of the ones with hardware back-compat.
Unfortunately I bought it in the far east and live in Europe.
So it won't play any of *my* old games library. Damn them.
Er...you can't buy PS2 games for non-compatible PS3s through the PS Store because the lack of PS2 compatibility means you can't play them. You can buy PSX games through the PS Store, but you can also play PSX games right from the disc (if you still have your old copy) on *any* PS3. The real gyp is that you can't play old PSX games on your PSP, because the PSP has no way to read the discs. For that, you really do have to buy them again from the PS Store.
Sure, the PS3 Slim is nice. But what I find interesting is the PSP Digital Reader Service. The (very brief) article mentions that Sony is teasing about extending it beyond comics by the end of the year. Not coincidentally, that's also when they plan to have their eBookstore migrated over to the ePub format. Considering the iPhone/iPod Touch are among the most used digital book-reading devices, and the PSP has a screen resolution that's similar, this could be a very wise move. Assuming this actually happens, you'll also have the ability to buy new releases directly from the PSP using WiFi (something that many people are wishing for in a new Sony eBook reader). Interesting times ahead...
This guy's the limit!
Launch PS3 used an Emoticon Chip. Essentially, they cheated and hid a PS2 under the hood. It was NOT done with software.
No, the original PS3 actually had all the hardware of a PS2 built into it to provide compatibility; no software emulation. Then they removed most of the hardware and did software emulation, and then the current models removed the rest of the hardware and provide no compatibility at all. Europe was the most out of luck here; no hardware-compatible PS3 was ever released in PAL format, although they did get a software emulation model.
This was precisely my experience before I bought a HD capable monitor. Next gen games are quite simply unplayable on anything less than 720p.
However, the big problem here is that Last gen games are unplayable at anything above 576p! OK slight exaggeration, but old games do look awful on a HD TV. Aliasing everywhere. And therein lies the biggest reason that Sony and Microsoft need to keep up backwards compatibility. I can tell you that PS2 games played on a PS3 instead of a PS2 look a hell of a lot better. It's like night and day. Add to this the convienicen factor, and I'm pretty irritated with Sony for dropping this feature and refusing to reimplement it. There are still loads of fantastic PS2 titles I haven't played, and more are still coming out!
May the Maths Be with you!
The problem exists with XBox 360 as well, Dead Rising was a PITA to read text on.
However this is indeed an issue. I couldn't read most test for GTA4, my minimap in Dynasty Warriors 6 was fuzzy and practically useless. I had to pause to look at the largest battlefield map to get an idea of what was going on. A lot of things became a lot cleared when I went to a HDTV.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I want to be able to do more than read Comic Books with a reader program. I want to be able to read PDF, ODF, RTF, HTML, CHM, and other formats that eBooks come in.
If I buy a PSP or Slim PS3, I want an educational value for it as well as a gaming one. I want more than a Language Tutor program or BrainAge, I want to be able to read eBooks as well.
I am sticking to a PS2...
last i checked the PS2 has none of those features. if you're serious about using a gaming console for education i actually think the PS3 is about as close as you'll get. in addition to the obvious of being able to teach somebody the basics of running linux from the command line, since its the only console with a blu ray you can get the blue planet series on BD its an incredible documentary that is full of education.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
"PS3 really isn't "standard def. TV friendly".... My experience with using a PS3 in standard def resolution was eye-strain inducing, trying to read many of the text fonts the games would display."
I use a ps3 on a 5 yr old reasonably-sized SDTV and you couldn't be more correct. It is a HUGE pain to try to play any games with small print. PixelJunk Monsters is almost not playable because your character is too small to see, and you can forget trying to read any subtitles or instructions. I keep looking for a way to increase text size or change the screen size but it seems everything is set-up properly to display in SD, it's just the way the games display.
I'll probably get a HDTV within the next year so it's not a huge deal, I really bought the ps3 to play one particular game and that works well, and lately I've been using it for Hulu and the seemingly endless supply of free game demos so I'm satisfied.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
There is a way to run a PS1 disc in your PS3 and stream it to your PSP over LAN/Internet.. .Location free player is the util, I believe. It does have (especially over the internet) some major latency issues though.
For you in America and Europe yes they did that but not in Australia where it was done in software.