Sony PlayStation 3

Sony PlayStation 3

VideoGamesSony now the 400pound gorilla of the video game console world is poised to bring out the third version of its recordbreaking PlayStation The PlayStation 2 has brought the worlds premiere video games to over 100 million homes 100 million and the PlayStation 3 is expected to outsell its parent

Like all the newest consoles of its generation it promises groundbreaking new graphical detail and puts unprecedented processing and memory resources at the feet of eager game developers Everything is bigger brighter and more detailed so detailed in fact that it outstrips the visual output of the Xbox 360 delivering a rare 1080p or flickerfree 1920 x 1080 resolution to the Xbox 360s halfasdetailed 1080i and may induce some gamers to buy new HDTVs to replace the relatively new ones they thought would satisfy them for years

The PS3 is scheduled for a Spring 2006 release which some have postulated means a worldwide March 2006 launch

According to published specifications the PlayStation 3 clocks in at 218 GFLOPs This is a measure of the sheer number of floatingpoint nonwholenumber mathematical operations it can pull off in a set space of time If this is true it will be almost twice as powerful as the Xbox 360 and 35 times mas macho than the PlayStation 2
As with the CPU the GPU comparison is murky terribly murky Microsofts using an ATI chip with a brandnew Unified Shader Architecture that is difficult to compare with traditional video technology The PS3 uses the Nvidia RSX which Sony says is more powerful than two GeForce 6800 strapped together Our conclusion the consoles will be comparable in graphical power Speaking of moving pictures the PS3 is also participating in the next Beta vs VHS battle this time being waged over the successor to DVD The two contenders are HDDVD and Bluray and Sony has come down firmly in the latter camp The PS3 will be able to play movies in the new highcapacity format and games as well

The PS3 controller is a revelation and in this writers eyes an ugly one The triedandtrue PS2 controller has been unceremoniously ousted and the usurper is a nasty looking silver batarang with a narrow curving face The button layout is largely similar to the old controller but the entire setup stinks of form over function Will nextgeneration gaming mean nextgeneration orthopedic surgery

Theres a lot of speculation about what Sony will do to compete with Microsofts fullyfeatured Xbox Live internet multiplayermatching system Sony claims theyll have a unified solution At the same time in early 2005 they announced theyll leave a lot of it up to the market keeping it open platform so that publishers can create opportunities directly with gamers rather than forcing everything to go through one single channel a la Xbox Live

Both the 360 and the PS3 will support USB devices wireless communication home networking and wireless controllers

The PS3 wont come with a hard drive but itll have a slot for a notebooksized 2 5 hard drive It will also support the Memory Stick SD and CompactFlash storage formats At the Game Developers ConferenceEurope the head of Sony Europe announced that the PS3 SDK will boast sophisticated middleware software that makes developing the full games easier such as the popular Havok physics engine Ageias Novodex and Epics wellknown Unreal Engine 3 as well as numerous readytouse code libraries The platform will also be fully downwardcompatible playing both PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 games This is good news for gamers who have sunk and for many are still sinking hundreds of dollars into their game libraries.