May 8, 2006 – Los Angeles, CA – Sony unveiled the final version of the PS3 at their E3 Press Conference today in Los Angeles, CA, and to the delight of fans everywhere, answered many of the questions gamers have had regarding the new system. The first question is of course if the PS3 can deliver on the promises made at this year’s E3.
Here’s a general list of things that was promised at E3.
Launch Date:
- November 11, 2006 – Japan
- November 17, 2006 – North America
Price:
- 20GB PlayStation 3 System – $499
- 60GB PlayStation 3 System – $599
2 PS3 Packages:
Unfortunately, the system is higher than originally anticipated ($300 was mentioned last year) and it came as a surprise that the specs of the 20GB machine will actually be different than the 60GB machine; it’s not just the drop in size of the hard drive.
Last year Sony stated the PS3 would come with 6 USB ports, 3 Ethernet ports, and 2 HDMI outputs. This has changed as of yesterday:
The 20GB PS3 package will NOT come with:
- Memory Stick, SD, or Compact Flash support
- Wi-Fi Capabilities
- HDMI Output – this means this model will NOT support HD output.
The 60GB Model WILL come with:
- 4 USB ports (also available on the 20GB version)
- Memory card reader (Memory stick, SD and Compact Flash)
- 802.11b/g wireless
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Support 1080i and 1080p
- HDMI Output
- AV Output
- Digitial Optical Output
PS3 Dualshock Controller
©Twin Design/Shutterstock.com
The controller is now wireless and features 6 degrees of motion sensing allowing players to control onscreen characters by moving the controller up, down, side, and rolling. The rumble feature has been removed due to interference with the motion sensing, but this could also have something to do with the lawsuit between Immersion and Sony over the use of the rumble feature technology.
Software in development
Here are the upcoming games for PS3 that should be available either at the time of time launch or shortly after.
- Devil May Cry 4
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Gran Turismo 5
- Killzone 2
- Metal Gear Solid 4
- Tekken 6
- The Getaway 3
- Unreal Tournament 2007
- WarHawk
- God of War 2
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- M.S. Gundam
- Ni-Oh
- Red Dead Revolver 2
- Fifth Phantom Saga
- Heavenly Sword
- Killing Day
- MotorStorm
- Formula One
- Eyedentity
System Specs
Overview:
- Backwards compatible with all PS1 and PS2 games
- Supports 7 Bluetooth controllers out of the box
- Six USB slots for peripherals – 4 in front and 2 in back
- Blu-ray discs as its media format (holds up to 6 times as much data as current DVDs)
- Will launch in spring of 2006
- Detachable 2.5-inch HDD
- Memory Stick Duo, SD slot, compact flash memory slot
- PSPs can be used as controllers
CPU:
- Cell Processor
- PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
- 1 VMX vector unit per core
- 512KB L2 cache
- 7 x SPE @3.2GHz
- 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
- 7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
- 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
- total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS
GPU:
- RSX @550MHz
- 1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
- Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
- Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Sound:
- Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)
Memory:
- 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
- System Bandwidth:
- Main RAM 25.6GB/s
- VRAM 22.4GB/s
- RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
- SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)
- System Floating Point Performance:
- 2 TFLOPS
Storage:
- Detachable 2.5″ HDD slot x 1
- I/O:
- USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
- Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
- SD standard/mini x 1
- CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1
Communication:
- Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
- Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
- Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
Controller:
- Bluetooth (up to 7)
- USB 2.0 (wired)
- Wi-Fi (PSP)
- Network (over IP)
AV Output:
- Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
- HDMI: HDMI out x 2
- Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
- Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1
Disc Media:
- CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
- DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
- Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
Now if the PS3 lives up to the hype Sony is pushing, only time will tell.
The image featured at the top of this post is ©AlexandrBognat/Shutterstock.com.