PS3 με μιά(??) ματιά!!!

[DIMITRIS K.]

Από το www.gamespot.com!


The PlayStation 3 system will be available with two different hard-drive options in Japan and the United States in November 2006, and in Europe and Australasia in March 2007. The later date for the European and Australasian launches (as well as those planned for Russia, the Middle East, and Africa) has been blamed on delays in blue-laser diode production. The console will hit Japan first on November 11. The 20GB model will sell for 49,980 yen (about $429), roughly $85 lower than the 59,800 yen price Sony originally announced for the console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006. Sony will let Japanese retailers name their own price for the 60GB version. The PlayStation 3 will launch in the United States on November 17. In the US, the 20GB version will retail for $499, and the 60GB version will retail for $599. In Europe, the 20GB version will retail for 499 euros, and the 60GB version will retail for 599 euros. In Australia, the 20GB version will retail for AU$829.95, and the 60GB version will retail for AU$999.95.

The new PlayStation 3 console has an elegant design featuring clean lines and pleasing curves. In contrast to the Xbox 360's puckered "inhale" shape, the PS3 sides expand outward, barely containing the hardware inside. Designers had to build the case around the advanced cooling system built to handle heat output from the Cell processor, the Nvidia GPU, and the system power supply. PC or even Xbox 360 owners would expect a system with as much power as the PS3 to sound like a small aircraft on power up, but the system is actually remarkably quiet. "When it starts to notice a heat issue, it can ramp up the fan RPMs, but in general, it's as quiet as the PlayStation 2 was," according to Sony's Richard Marks.


The 60GB PlayStation 3 will have chrome trim.

Early prototypes showed consoles in white, black, and silver--but initial models will only be black. Sony used material choice to add extra sophistication to the console design. The console exterior appeared to be a glossy, opaque black in official preview images, but the system casing is actually a very dark, semi-transparent black similar in style to the PSP's exterior. The curved top of the console suggests that the PS3 will need to sit at the very top of your equipment stack if placed horizontally. The console will weigh in at a solid 11 pounds. In comparison, the Xbox weighs 8.5 pounds and the Xbox 360 weighs 7.7 pounds. The PS3 measures 12.8"(W) x 3.8"(H) x 10.8"(L), which is in line with the other consoles.

Like the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3 will be able to stand vertically or sit horizontally on an AV rack. PS3 owners will be able to reposition the console while the system is running without worrying about accidentally damaging a game or movie disc. "We've been doing that for six years now, I think, so we're confident that we'll have no issue with that," said Marks.

PlayStation 3 60GB PlayStation 3 20GB
Price $599 $499
CPU Cell Processor Cell Processor
GPU Nvidia RSX Nvidia RSX
System Memory 256MB XDR 256MB XDR
Graphics Memory 256MB GDDR3 256MB GDDR3
Hard Disk 2.5" SATA 60GB 2.5" SATA 20GB
Optical Drive Blu-ray Blu-ray
USB 2.0 4-ports 4-ports
Flash Memory Slots Memory Stick, SD, Compact Flash None
Ethernet Port Yes Yes
Wi-Fi Built-in 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi None
Bluetooth 2.0 EDR Yes Yes
Bluetooth Controllers Yes Yes
Resolutions 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI Port Yes Yes
Digital Optical Out Yes Yes

The 60GB console features a front-slot-loading Blu-ray optical-disc drive and four USB ports, as well as memory stick, compact flash, and SD card reader support to provide for an absurd level of media connectivity. The 20GB PlayStation 3, in comparison, won't have memory stick, compact flash, or SD card ports. The 60GB version will also come with Wi-Fi built-in, but the 20GB version will only have the Ethernet port.


The BD, Blu-ray Disc remote control will be available separately for $25.

The Blu-ray optical-disc drive can play games and movie discs. Each Blu-ray disc can hold up to 54GB worth of data, which should virtually guarantee that games won't be left wanting for extra media space. Games will be region-free, but movies will still have region locks preventing multiregion playback. The Blu-ray spec has North America, South America, and Asia (except for China) in region A. If the spec doesn't change, that means your US PlayStation 3 should be able to play those Blu-ray Godzilla movies imported from Japan. The first 500,000 PS3 units will ship with a full-length Blu-ray movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The PS3's Blu-ray drive will also support many of the older disc formats, including CD-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD+R.

The 2.5" portable hard drives supply the system with much-needed storage space for PlayStation Network downloads, applications, and media files. Games will use the hard drive for game saves, and it will cache game files for decreased load times. During the Gran Turismo HD E3 2006 demonstration, Sony's Kaz Hirai boasted that load times would be reduced to two to three seconds. The game took around six to seven seconds to load during the E3 demo, but loading times will likely drop once developers have more time for game optimization. The 60GB PS3 will be more useful than the 20GB version if you wish to take advantage of the system's media functionality, but Sony has stated that upgrading the hard disk will be as simple as dropping a larger capacity 2.5" SATA notebook hard drive into the system.

 

[DIMITRIS K.]

The PlayStation 3 will have a 3.2GHz Cell processor that consists of a single PowerPC-based core with seven synergistic processing units. The Cell is the result of a joint effort between IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. The primary PowerPC core has a 512KB L2 cache, and each SPE has 256KB of its own memory to work with. The CPU has an eighth SPE for "redundancy," which means that each Cell chip only needs seven working SPEs to pass muster for the PS3.The Cell processor will be powerful enough to drive a new class of gameplay physics impossible to run on older console hardware, including cloth and fluid simulations, as well as large-scale rigid-body interactions with hundreds and thousands of objects colliding onscreen. Today's PCs in comparison will need a physics add-on card or find a way to tap the GPU for physics processing to run PS3-level physics effects. Additionally, developers will be able to use the Cell's SPEs to give games new audio effects previously only available on the PC with dedicated audio processing.

The industry-wide shift to multicore processing platforms will have a major impact on developers in the coming years. A lot of the burden will fall upon the hardware manufacturers themselves to design systems and provide tools that will make it easier for programmers to write games. Sony has announced that the PS3 will use Open GL/ES, a specialized API closely related to Open GL, and programmers will be able to access the Cell's SPEs using C or C++ tools, instead of having to program on the assembly level as they did with the PS2.

Sony will pair the Cell with a very powerful graphics processor based on advanced Nvidia technology. You may remember that Nvidia did the graphics for the first Xbox system, but with reports of contract disputes between Nvidia and Microsoft, few were surprised when both companies chose to change dance partners for the next console cycle. Microsoft went with ATI for the Xbox 360, and Nvidia hooked up with Sony on the PlayStation 3. The end result of that collaboration is the PlayStation 3 RSX "Reality Synthesizer" graphics-processing unit, a massive 550MHz, 300-million-transistor graphics chip based on GeForce 7800 GTX graphics technology.

The PlayStation 3 has 256MBs of Rambus XDR memory and 256MBs of GDDR3 memory dedicated to graphics. Nvidia claims that the RSX can take advantage of the combined 512MBs of memory, since it is capable of writing directly to system memory. The increased graphics-memory bandwidth and storage space will let developers use high-resolution textures and enable antialiasing to provide detailed, jaggy-free graphics. The RSX's programmable shader capabilities greatly increase graphics efficiency and will let game developers use advanced effects such as subsurface scattering to simulate human skin.

Wireless Sixaxis Controllers

The new PS3 controller heavily resembles the traditional Dual Shock gamepad design. The L2 and R2 shoulder buttons located on the top of the controller have been enlarged, with increased depth in stroke for more subtle game control. Sony has also enlarged the tilting angle of the analog joysticks to enable more delicate manipulation and a wider range of motion. Whereas the analog sticks on the Dual Shock controller for the PlayStation 2 had 8-bit sensitivity, the new controller will have 10-bit motion detection.


The PS3 wireless sixaxis controller will have built-in tilt movement support.

The new controller has two analog sticks, the usual four-button complement on the right side, and four top-side trigger buttons. However, the new PlayStation 3 controller will also have six-axis motion-sensing capabilities. The controller is capable of sensing motion in six degrees: up, down, left, right, forward, and backward. The new six-axis movement control will let players use body English to help control a game. For example, tilting the controller upward in the jet fighter game Warhawk will point the aircraft's nose in the air and shifting the sides of the controller up and down will cause the aircraft to tilt in a similar manner. The controller will weigh no more than the wired Dual Shock controller, even with the added six-axis functionality, but that might be due to the loss of force feedback support.

Like the Xbox 360 controller, the new PlayStation 3 controller will be wireless, but it'll get its freedom from Bluetooth rather than the traditional 2.4GHz RF. Devices operating with Bluetooth generally have a range of around nine meters, but Sony has stated that the PS3 controller will have a 20-meter wireless range. The controller will have a 30-hour battery life, a figure that seems to be in line with other Bluetooth devices but far short of the 300-hour 2.4GHz models available for current consoles. You will be able to recharge the controller by connecting it to the PlayStation 3 with a USB cable. The controller will be functional while tethered to the system and will also be hot pluggable, which means you can plug and unplug controllers while the system is on.

However, you won't be able to replace the controller battery. If the rechargeable battery ever dies, you'll have to buy a new controller or send the dead one back to Sony for replacement. We're guessing it'll take several years before the battery dies, so let's hope we've all moved on to the PlayStation 4 by then. Sixaxis wireless PS3 controllers will sell for $50.

 

[VG]

Απο 499Ε δηλαδη θα ξεκιναει στην Ελλαδα,καθοτι ως γνωστον η ισοτιμια $ με € ειναι 1:1