Pioneer Blu-ray player will revolutionise your wallet It can read loads of wongaBy INQUIRER staff: Thursday 11 May 2006, 10:24 A BLU-RAY DVD writer from Pioneer will set you back nearly £600 when it's available in a few weeks time.What do you get for your £579.95, then? You get a BDR-101A which can read and write most DVD recordable media formats and stuff with the letters BD in front of it.According to Overclockers UK it is "expected to revolutionize digital and high definition media storage".What's for sure is that it will revolutionise the shape of your wallet from thick to thin. Do you really want to be an early adaptor [sic]. Also, where is the Intel Viiv sticker? The world+dog knows you need one of those for it to work in your lebensraum.
Sony lost the plot Here's howBy Nick Farrell: Thursday 11 May 2006, 15:22ONE DAY, Sony lost the plot. It had the designers, the material, the loyal fan-base and Microsoft as main rivals. How could it lose? But punters meandering away from the E3 games fest this week can't help but think that somehow, somewhere, a burst of insanity has seized the company. The only likely scenario can be one like this: Imagine a Sony boardroom last June. Welsh wizard, Howard Stringer, is in the chair for the first time.(ACT ONE)The Sony boardroom. SONY EXECS seated. STRINGER pacing. STRINGER. OK, moving onto the PS3… what is the easiest way for us to lose the ball on this one?SONY EXEC ONE. Price, if we make it too expensive then Nintendo and Microsoft will screw us to the wall. Most people will not pay more than what the XBOX360 costs. STRINGER. Great, anything else?SONY EXEC TWO. We could delay it for ages until box Microsoft has established itself in the market. That would make it harder for us to claw back our lucrative European and American base.STRINGER. Not bad, need a few more here.SONY EXEC THREE. Well it is a bit tricky but we could make two versions of the PS3. One will have all the wi-fi gubbins and other bits that people want and will make it different from the XBOX360 and the Revolution. But make this version even more expensive than the base unit.STRINGER. Nice thinking. It would also split our marketing budget between two similar products and the punters wouldn't know what we were selling.SONY EXEC ONE. We could also make a really low key launch of all the details while our competitors are all over the games press like a hot rash.STRINGER. Interesting how do we do that? There will be a lot of people interested in the PS3.SONY EXEC ONE. We could go to E3, lock the demonstration models in a glass box and be evasive about crucial things like launch dates.STRINGER. I like it… we will do all those things.Sony Exec Two: Are you nuts?STRINGER. No I am Welsh, we have a long history of being shafted by everyone from the Romans, the Normans, the English and the European Union but singing beautifully while it is done. I have no intention of winning against Microsoft or Nintendo. Now about what is happening with that Blu-Ray thingee. How are negotiations going with the HD-DVD crowd? µ
Thanks to the guys at b3d There are various interviews with SCE at E3, here's a brief summary of them."PS3 is a computer" (as a PC is an office computer), basically it's the message.http://ps3.ign.com/articles/706/706133p1.html * The playable devkits at the E3 floor are all connected to the network and new builds of games are sent there day by day via FTP even during the E3 * The PS3 price may be too cheap, it's like no other. (See the IGN article) * 2 million units at launch. (See the IGN article)Ken Kutaragi interview @ Nikkei Tech-onhttp://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20060510/116928/ * Contrary to the underestimation by people, there are over 10 playable titles at the show floor, unlike the days of PS1/2 * There's not necessarily a correlation between the higher software development cost and the higher hardware spec. The criticism that regards PS3 as a too fat, too powerful hardware sounds like the excuse by those who avoid the challenge to new technologies. Until E3 developers hadn't known what other developers had been doing, apparently there are those who are surprised to see the states of completion of PS3 games not only among users but also among developers. I expect it can remove the excuse. * Many devkits are stacked in the data center at the E3 showfloor connected to the network. Developers can send data everyday via FTP like in arcard games development. Consumer games distribution will begin to focus on network more, for example using a BD as a key disc, game contents are updated via network, or you can carry over the data you played at an arcade to a PS3 at home. PS3 begins the evolution since the day one you purchased it along with the network, because there's no need to close it within a package. People will feel it in the very near future, sooner than March 2007. * PS3 is a computer, just like a typical computer which downloads a program from CD-ROM to HDD then executes it from an HDD as a cache. If the HDD space is small for you, you can buy a bigger HDD. In the next year even a PS3 with 120GB HDD may be released. It's not another version of PS3, it's just another configuration. Because PS3 is a computer. We may be able to sell it in BTO (built-to-order) for each customer. With that assumption, the internal of PS3 is designed with modularity in mind unlike home appliances and game consoles. In the way of thinking with which a computer is designed, we adopted standard interfaces and selected various parts with extensibility in mind. * Kutaragi feels potential in the "Eye of Judgement" game. * We have as many Cell as we'd like to sell them, so no worry about the scarcity. We started the manufacturing of Cell in Summer 2005. The more Cell the more better since we want to put Cell servers across the network. What's really difficult to secure were general parts in good times, such as passive parts, memory, HDD, boards, plate, and all other parts for 1 million per month production. * (Answering the question about what Sony President Chubachi is saying as "customer viewpoint" lately) I am hardly conscious of it, we've been always with the customer since we began PlayStation. PS is a part of daily life and SCE employees, families, and myself are all uses, in other words customers.Izumi Kawanishi interview (SCEI corporate executive, software platform development division) @ ITmedhttp://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/games/articles/0605/11/news058.html * The base system of the 20GB PS3 and the 60GB PS3 is the same, it's like PC motherboards with different interfaces but different peripherals. It's not that there are 2 models of PS3, they are variations. * It's natural that specs are different due to price ranges, just like hi-end and lo-end PC. * The PS3 spec is the same worldwide, but there'll be more variations in future. * The current PS3 can't output different pictures through HDMI and AV-multi. There may be a PS3 with 2 HDMIs in future * Games can be saved in HDD. The difference in 20GB/60GB PS3 such as HDMI, WiFi, memory cards slot, and HDD won't matter in playing games. If you feel the HDD is small you can buy a bigger one. * Though we wanted to add a motion sensor before we couldn't decide what kind of it should be built in and sensor devices were not good enough back then. * The new PS logo button is used to raise the system menu, to turn on/off PS3, and to make the system recognise the controller. It's powered by a battery charged with a USB cable from PS3 to controller. The controller can't be used for PS2. * PS3 has a standard web browser and a media player and XMB. It can play download contents and send data to PSP as a server. For the 20GB HDD PS3, PSP is connected via USB. * In the PS1 emulation in PSP, PS1 game code is not at all modified. Some games can be run on a general emulator and others will be shipped with a special emulator. They are booted from MemStick Duo. If users want PSP may support MemStick boot of user application in future. * The power supply unit of PS3 is internal. The quietness is equal to the PS2. ( speaking as quiet as the Slim Ps2)Izumi Kawanishi interview (SCEI corporate executive, software platform development division) @ PC Watch, by Zenji Nishikawa(Some parts are the same as the interview above, such parts are omitted)http://watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20060511/ps3.htm# Though the PS3 hardware spec itself supports 2 screens output, the SKUs don't support it currently because its merit for users is unknown for now. HDMI x2 may be possible in future variations of PS3.# We know 1080p is not an easy task but as you see GT:HD it's not impossible. Just like PS2 which was said to have too little VRAM in the early days we are not much concerned about it now.# As for rendering resolution we recommend 1080p and 720p. Though we have no strict guidelines we recommend 1080p, anyway. But it depends on what resolution is prevalent for TV when a game launches.# As for the developer comment that they prioritize info density per pixel to pointless HD, it's OK that a game has a different priority, though SD is nor preferable.# As for the GbE port, the first PS3 configurations in 2006 have only one but in future configurations they can add more ports if they are needed.# Unlike PS2 and other game consoles with OS and drivers on a game disc with the assumption that the hardware spec doesn't change, PS3 allows the change of the hardware spec with demands of the times. The OS and drivers are installed in PS3 and it absorbs hardware differences, which resembles the current form of PC.# Since PS3 has Linux installed Linux programming is allowed. License fees are not required for individual developers. Licensed PS3 game developers can get SDK and technical support by SCE, on the other hand in the Linux world they don't have to pay license fee but the support is minimum. In Linux, Cell is under the hardware layer of the OS supervisor, but things inlcuding SPE are expected to be open to developers. But we don't intend to mix the PS3 as a game platform and the PS3 in the Linux world.# PS3 is always "PlayStation". But in the category of computer entertainment, it's not necessarily a game that's provided for PS3. In that case, it may compete with PC including Windows PC.# (Answering the question why there are no non-game apps in the E3 show floor) Well, it's because this is E3
