PS3 to arrive in March 2006

Convergence.....not sure it's a good idea. Sony and MS are forgetting why they are here once again.

GAMES GAMES GAMES.

Picture this :

Kid : "Mum, the PS3 three has crashed again, and the laser is playing up again"
Mum: ''Well we'll have to take the whole bloody tv/PS3/dvd/pc back to for repair or refund. We'll have to go without them for a while though."
Kid: "Oh well, back to playing PS2 again."

My aunt had this problem when she bought an all-in-one tv and video. One day the video part ate a tape, and the only way to get it out was to take the whole thing for repair, which left them with nothing to watch. This is why seperate pieces of equipment will always be more popular, than this far fetched idea that may cost a bomb, and become like betamax, long forgotten when you have new kit.

Convergence isn't really the only problem, it's also being able to customise and upgrade stuff after a while, because there is no one set standard and technology is always progressing an moving forward.

CELL to feature in PS3? WOW! Theres a shock announcement for you! Whoever would have guessed that before this enlightening article?

PS: Is this news world exclusive?

Here's an example of how convergance might be a good thing though...

My super smart Pixel Plus tv uses software to double the resolution of the screen, providing a gorgeously crystal clear picture. Until there is movement, then you get artifacts. Now with my PC, after a few years I can download new drivers for my graphics card that can improve the performance massively, without buying new hardware, spending money or doing anything complicated to the PC's innards. How good would it be if I could just download new drivers for my tv? Maybe in a few years you could download new drivers for your wireless networked fridge that will make it's operation more efficient and save money on your electricity bill... sounds good to me.

And as for the getting things fixed business - if my printer stops working, I don't take my printer, pc, router, monitor, keyboard, speakers, scanner to be repaired! If the fridge stops working, just get the sodding fridge fixed!

i agree with.. um.. whoever said something first ;P

anyway, i find it very stoopid to put twohundread things in one. one break down, they all go down. stupid or what?

oh, btw, you wont even need to buy a new fridge efter the ps3. BECAUSE IT IS A FRIDGE! and its a tv (so you wont have to buy that), its even got nuclear weapons. you cant beat that can you? ;D

Concidering Nintendo's next gen console may be just as crazy as the DS, I really have no idea what to think until the stuff gets revealed in a year.

But sheesh, can't I enjoy my console for more than a week before talks of Playstation27 and Gamecube-SuperDuper start up?

I know longer care what bloody chips are called, Cell or Bell. We just want games dammit.

I don't have to run my life, just my games.

Sony only said the Cell chip will be ready by March 2006. This does not automatically mean that they will have the whole PS3 box finished and released.

Before you can release PS3, you need some launch titles. Before you can make a game for PS3, you need a dev-kit. It's very very hard to make a game if you can't test it on real hardware.

So, by March 2006, I think Sony will start to ship real hardware to the developers. Then it will take several months of final development and testing until the games are finished. Then Sony can release the PS3. (Usually a good game takes 2+ years to make, but with launch titles you start developing on piece-of-s**t emulation hardware, so you have a head start.)

So, don't go crazy about March 2006. I don't think you'll be able to buy a PS3 until many months after (Christmas 2006, at best, is my guess).

SillySprout wrote:

>CELL to feature in PS3? WOW! Theres a shock
>announcement for you! Whoever would have
>guessed that before this enlightening article?

Where in this article is there an announcement that PS3 would be CELL-based?

If you actually read it instead of strapping on your blacked-out prejudice googles, you might have noticed that the only announcement mentioned was Nonuyeki Idei's statement that CELL processor would be in use by March '06. I guess you couldn't read that from way up there on your high horse.

> PS: Is this news world exclusive?

LOL. I think I cracked a rib I laughed so hard.

G.

Smedis wrote:

So, by March 2006, I think Sony will
>start to ship real hardware to the developers.
>Then it will take several months of final
>development and testing until the games are
>finished. Then Sony can release the PS3. (Usually
>a good game takes 2+ years to make, but with
>launch titles you start developing on
>piece-of-s**t emulation hardware, so you have a
>head start.)

Cell workstations are to be released end of this year; that's your development kit. The time taken to create a new game might be far less in future with advanced developemnt tools. Sony are investing a lot in getting the tools right this according to reports. There is already supposedly software in development for PS3.

So, don't go crazy about March
>2006. I don't think you'll be able to buy a PS3
>until many months after (Christmas 2006, at best,
>is my guess).

As the news story stated, Idei said Cell chips would be out in March, and PS£ was to be the first device to use Cell. I don't know if that last part is confirmed anywhere else.

Regards convergance, this ISN'T every device in one per se. The idea is to enable multiple access points to media. You can browse the web on your computer, or TV (so you don't have to get out of your chair and go to your computer when watching TV), or PSP. You'll also have digital content enabled TVs. The Cell should provide enough power to decode compressed data, provide full audio decoding so you won't need a large music amp-box, DSP audio effects, and provide all sorts of other lovely features. You will still have to buy (or choose to buy) seperate BluRay disc player, TV, computer, but these devices (Cell empowered, from Sony, Toshiba, or whoever they license the tech to) will work better together, THINKING together instead of just passing picture/audio data.

Okaay, I;'l run with that thought. Your PS3 has a CELL, as does your TV, DVD, phone, fridge, whatever. Your Viao PC probably has one too.

Now, were each of these to be backed by high-speed wireless networking capabilities, with the right low-level software the whole lot could become one beautiful distributed processing system.

We could find the cure for cancer in three weeks, decode aliens transmission in five, then get back to playing games with 10 bazillion polys, vertex mapping, completely procedural texturing, self-shodowing, unlimited light sources with volumetric shadow casting and physics models so complex they'd make Mother Nature weep.

That seems to be Sony's gameplan. Interesting to think how much POWER there will be when 100,000,000 PS3's running at 1,000,000,000,000 floating point operations a second network up to work on protein folding problems or the like.