PS3 console to be released in 2005

Japanese media reported on May 6th that the PS3 console is in development. The goal is to make new processor technology, called "grid" about 200x faster than current console technology. This is almost achieving their original goal of making the PS3 1000(!) times faster than the PS2. This goal was publically set by Mr Okamoto, the Senior VP and Chief Technical Officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, at the 2002 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.

The Cell - Power for Playstation 3 and ...more!


The heart of the Playstation3 will be a new chip (or rather chip set) developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The companies will collectively invest more than $400 million in the next five years to design a "supercomputer-on-a-chip" for the PS3. The name for this technology is "grid" (formerly called "cell") and appears to be targeted squarely at the possibilities of parallel and distributed computing over the internet. Grid computing is a variation of distributed computing, and presumably involves networked game machines sharing software, processing power and data. Okamoto also said that networking applications including downloadable software would be integral to Sony's Playstation3 console. A recent report (May 5 2002) from the Japanese News Agency Kyodo said that the Playstation 3 would work over superfast fiber optics connections and would be Sony's first console to run games without a digital video disc. Sony also is considering offering the new chip to other companies for use in televisions and electronics equipment, Kyodo said.


Present memory not fast enough for Playstation3


Kenshi Manabe, senior vice president of Sony Computer Entertainment Semiconductor division, said the Playstation3 will need memory with incredibly high speed and tens-of-gigahertz bandwidth. "I'm not sure that even what we have seen for DDR-II on the present (industry) memory roadmaps will be high enough performance for us."

Sony's vision: PS3 as the all-encompassing home system?

If Sony's aspirations succeed, then the Playstation 3 will not be a pure video game console, but rather measure the amount of milk left in the fridge, record TV programs to hard-disk, automatically download new software, perform Tera-flop operations and a variety of other things. In short, if one can automate, computerize, network or electrify a process, then the PS3 should be able to take on the task.


Today, a system like this sounds futuristic. A super-console, replacing TV, computer, game console and complete home electronics system in one wont be cheap. Rumors are making rounds that the PS3 will be sold in two versions, one that is the do-all Playstation 3 version with all the bells and whistles (perhaps including laying golden eggs as well?) and one that is, yikes(!), just a pure video game console.


Well if you want the better system its going to cost 600-700$ if you want the cheap basic version its 375$ im going for the 600$ system....o yea the style will be extremley sick...controller will have grips on it