PS3 Rumors

[JOKER96BRAVO]

Heard any???
I've heard a few but nothing juicy.
Sony is keeping very quite about the PS3.
So far I've heard:

Blue ray will increase the price of games by at least $20.
The system will cost Sony about $900 to make.
Release date pushed back to Christmas of 06.

Anything else???

 

[Dan]

I couldn't see them using Blue Ray technology. It's so brand-new, how many TVs are going to be able to support it? Unless they're putting out standard games and Blue Ray versions, which, I think, would be a waste of money for them.

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/15/news/international/sony_ps3.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Sony's PS3 game console delayed
Blames snag in copyright protection for Blu-ray technology; debut is expected before holiday season.
March 15, 2006: 6:30 AM EST


TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp. said Wednesday it would delay the release of its new PlayStation 3 video game console until early November because development of some of the technology was behind schedule.

The company, which currently dominates the game console market with a market share of about 70 percent, said it planned to launch the much-anticipated PlayStation 3 (PS3) almost simultaneously in Japan, North America and Europe in time for the key holiday season.

"When we initially announced our plans to launch this spring, we had expected the standardization work on all of the technologies to be completed by last August, but there were improvements that were decided on since then," said Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony's game division.

"We wanted to be sure to include all future technologies that are available now," he said at a business briefing for software developers as he apologized for not updating the industry sooner.

The PS3 launch date has been the subject of heavy speculation in the industry as expectations are high for the machine, which will have cutting-edge technology and is expected to enable users to play games and movies as well as download videos from the Internet.

A six-month delay in the launch date could mean handing further advantage to rival Microsoft Corp. (Research), which launched its competing Xbox 360 console last November.

Sony (Research) is now also likely to go head-to head with Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s next-generation Revolution console, which is expected to hit markets around the same time.

Shares of Sony fell 1.8 percent Wednesday in Japan after media reports that the PS3 launch would be pushed back.

Negative but expected
"(The delay) is negative news, but it was expected," said Mitsubishi UFJ Securities analyst Hirotoshi Murakami.

"The launch date is before the Christmas shopping season, so it is avoiding the worst scenario," he said, adding that some analysts had speculated the PS3 would not hit the market until next year.

Toshiaki Nishimura, senior analyst at Yasuda Asset Management, said he believed the delay was likely to have a short-term impact on earnings.

"Because game sales are a big source of earnings for Sony...and because the release is being pushed back by half a year, this is likely to drag earnings in the first half of next year below the market consensus," Nishimura said.

The market expects Sony to post an operating profit of ¥167.04 billion in the business year from April, according to a consensus estimate of 19 analysts compiled by Reuters Estimates.

KBC analyst Hiroshi Kamide said the delay of the PS3 also bodes ill for Japanese software developers, many of whom rely on PlayStation's popularity to drive revenues.

"There's nothing in the first half of the year, and the install base in the second half will be so small it will have no material impact for earnings at all," he said. "This is going to be a horrendous year."

Kutaragi blamed the delay on the belated finalization of the copy protection technology standard for the Blu-ray Disc drive, a next-generation DVD player that will be included in the PS3.

The standardization of digital audio and video technology to connect electronics devices was also late, he said.

Kutaragi said Sony planned to produce 1 million PS3 units a month initially, for a total of 6 million units in the business year ending March 2007.

"This may not seem like much, but it's more than the initial capacity for PlayStation 2," Kutaragi said, adding that near-final tool kits to develop games would be available to software makers by mid-May.

Analysts expect the PS3 to cost about $500 with an initial line-up of at least five to 10 games.

 

[JOKER96BRAVO]

That's cool that they think it will still be 500 bones.

Thanks for the news, keep em commin.

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

all the news you'll need on the ps3:

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/696/696062p1.html

 

[theHawk]

I don't give a rats ass about X-box 360, I am waiting for PS3. I can't wait to play a PS3 version of Gran Turismo and Need 4 Speed !!!

 

[Lefty Wilbury]

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1526859/20060323/index.jhtml?headlines=true

PlayStation 3 Demo Breaks Gaming Ground; Sony Predicts 'Radical Change'
03.23.2006 8:59 AM EST

Day three of the Game Developers Conference belonged to the PS3.
PlayStation 3
Photo: Getty Images

SAN JOSE, California — What does the video game future look like when filtered through a crystal ball built by Sony PlayStation? The company offered a peek at this week's Game Developers Conference.

One of the tallest men in video games, Sony's Head of Worldwide Game Studios Phil Harrison was an easy figure to spot Wednesday, his presence at the conference a steady reminder of the PlayStation brand's presence and potency. In the afternoon, he spoke to star Japanese game maker Tetsuya Mizuguchi after the "Lumines"-creator's speech about his upcoming Xbox 360 title "Ninety Nine Nights," and asked the designer to make games for the PS3 download service. (Any reply was kept appropriately out of earshot of nearby journalists).

By evening, Harrison was shepherding a dozen or so "Shadow of the Colossus" PS2 developers, fresh from winning five awards including best game of 2005 at the Game Developers Choice Awards. Later he worked the room at Sony's cavernous developer party, host to three igloo-shaped tents outfitted with international cuisine and a big glass tank featuring radio-controlled robots at battle.

But Harrison made the greatest impact earlier in the day. In a Wednesday morning keynote address at the San Jose Civic Center, the Sony exec confirmed an early November PS3 release (see "PlayStation 3 Part Of Your Summer Plans? Think Again"), showed several demos indicative of what games on the machine can really do, and predicted an eventual shift to a market where games are downloaded instead of bought in boxes. He made sure that the hump-day for San Jose's week-long event was all about Sony's next big thing in video games.

Harrison confirmed plans for the launch of an Xbox Live-style online service for PS3 code-named the PlayStation Network Platform, and he offered tantalizing hints of that network's potential by noting that massively multi-player online experts at Sony Online Entertainment co-developed the service. Harrison also revealed that MMO publishers would be able to provide their games on it.

He also predicting a looming shift in the way games are played and sold. "We make content," Harrison said. "We put it on discs we put it in boxes. We sell it in stores. It's what our industry has done very well for the past 25 years. However in the future we're going to go through a radical change. We're going to be creating and servicing a network of game communities." Gaming would involve linking up with networks of friends, downloading games directly onto consoles — a future, Harrison did not note, that is already partially realized by Xbox Live.

"I believe this represents the most fundamental shift in the planning, creation, production and management [conducted by] game developers that our industry has ever seen," Harrison said. He predicted the "shift from disc-based business to a network-based business" would be the talk of GDCs for years to come.

The keynote's main event was what Harrison described as the "demystification of the next generation." At E3, he and the rest of the PlayStation executive team had brought mostly pre-rendered trailers that left the audience salivating at PS3 possibilities but unsure if the eventual meal would match the pictures presented in the menu (see "PlayStation 3 Will Let You See The Spit Fly Like Never Before"). At GDC, Harrison was primarily showing demos running off of PS3 development kits.

"We start with events like this where game developers themselves come to understand the technology and come to understand the creative possibilities provided by what this box can do," Harrison told MTV News after a public demonstration of the PS3 in action. Harrison was still standing on the stage where he had just delivered his keynote address, standing beside two gleaming silver shells of the PS3. Like those units, which Harrison said he would only move with gloves on, the gradual unveiling of Sony's new machine is being handled with care.

During his presentation, Harrison cued an undersea demo of thousands of fish gathering in swirling schools, each using their own artificial intelligence to flock with matching species and zip through the deep. Later, on the GDC show floor, a Sony rep said the demo's 5,000 fish were flocking with a sophistication of autonomous artificial intelligence that would have limited the pool to just 50 if the demo had been built for PS2.

An unannounced PS3 car game was shown in equally stripped form. A sporty two-door was placed on a sun-cracked desert flat and an unseen gun let loose. This demo showed damage applied in procedural stages, meaning the destruction of the car was not a canned animation but rather a series of cracks, breaks and drops cued by the unique pattern of that particular play session's gunfire. The bullets at this demo punctured the passenger door enough that it swung open, causing the passenger window to shatter, the side mirror to crack off, the bumper to drop to the ground and the hood to pop open.

The next demo was an oversea aerial battle from "Warhawk," a title from developer Incognito that was promised to be playable at E3 in May. Incognito product director Dylan Jobe used a PS2 controller and PS3 devkit to steer a fighter through "hundreds" of enemy planes and a herd of lumbering ships. Jobe pointed out the game's procedurally rendered ocean (now waves — instead of a car — reacting on the fly to attack) and volumetric, ray-traced clouds.

Insomniac president Ted Price played a "Doom III"-style level of his company's PS3 first-person shooter "Resistance: Fall of Man," and introduced a non-interactive teaser trailer for his company's first next-gen "Ratchet and Clank." "If you do everything right, the PlayStation 3 can do more per frame than any system ever invented," Price raved as he blasted enemies in "Resistance" with a weapon perhaps best described as a porcupine bomb.

While the graphics of "Resistance" looked similar to current high-end PC offerings, they were greatly superseded by the crisp cityscape of flying traffic in the "Ratchet" teaser, underlining the gulf between the types of PS3 trailers that set the media abuzz at last E3 and what is actually playable. A similar graphical gap was evident in Evolution studio's "Motor Storm," an off-road racing game with an onstage playable demo at GDC 2006 that looked sharp but not as vivid as the realistic trailer unveiled at E3 2005. Still, "Motor Storm" provided the most visible and playable use of the PS3's tricks of any demo shown on Wednesday. A developer steered a yellow dune buggy through muddy terrain, its tracks digging ruts in the ground that immediately — and lastingly — deformed the track.

Noting how little tracks have been able to change in previous-gen games, a post-keynote Harrison praised the "Motor Storm" demo. "Those ruts left in the ground become gameplay obstacles to other vehicles," he said. "That is an addition to gameplay that was not possible on PlayStation 2."

It can't be denied, in at least one respect, that the PS3 has earth-shaking potential. Harrison promised more at E3.

— Stephen Totilo