Bronson
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Aus dem Entertaiment Investor Journal August:
At a top investors' meeting for the upper echelon of business associates in Osaka on July fifteenth, Sony Entertainment Corporation revealed the first public details about its next installment in the highly successful Play Station line of videogame consoles. A pre-production version of the machine was unveiled with appropriate tech-specs, and various real-time demonstrations of technical prowess were shown running on the unfinished hardware. The meeting was called in order to quell apprehension among investors that Sony's current market dominance with the Play Station 2 was going to be threatened by newer, more powerful consoles like the Microsoft XBox.
The machine is tentatively named Play Station 3, in keeping with the line's trend of naming new installments incrementally. Its project code-name in Sony Corp., however, was unapologetically named "Ka mi", which translates roughly to "god." This alone should give some idea of how much power Sony has put into the console.
The hardware itself was fairly unimpressive. It was comprised of a simple, unpolished metal box of roughly the same size as the current PS2. The slightly convex front of the machine had four small, circular controller ports along the bottom, and a disc-slot in the center space above, flanked by the power button on the left and the eject button on the right. There is currently no option to position the machine vertically, as there was with the PS2. The PS3 has replaced the disc-tray of the PS2 with a disc-slot, similar to those on some current DVD-players. It has support for several media: 650 MB CDs, 4.7 GB single-layer DVDs, 9 GB dual-layer DVDs, and the new Blu-ray Disc (BRD) format pioneered in part by Sony Corp.. This medium has a storage of 27 GB for a single layer, and up to 50 GB for dual-layer discs. Since the BRDs come in special protective plastic cases to distinguish them from other formats, a moving flap directly above the disc-slot on the PS3 retracts when a BRD is inserted. We will touch on this again later in the article, when discussing the PS3's media playback capabilities.
The controllers were also in pre-production stages, and in undistinguished gray plastic reminiscent of the original Play Station 1 controllers. The new controllers, currently dubbed the Triple Shocks, are slightly wider than the old Dual Shocks and Dual Shock 2s. The button arrangement is identical to the older models, but the left d-pad and analog stick positions have been switched in keeping with the current trend of XBox and GameCube controllers. The d-pad now has a raised plastic circle around it, facilitating the use of diagonals in games, and has been coated with textured rubber. The analog sticks were essentially the same as the previous installments, but have also been coated with the same textured rubber, allowing for greater control and comfort. The shoulder, start, and select buttons have all come through with basically no change whatsoever, and the analog button has been changed to a small
vertical switch. The rumble feature was not demonstrated, but Sony promised that it would be stronger and more precisely controlled. The biggest change, though, is that there is now a small slot at the back of the controller. This slot supports Sony's Memory Stick media cards, which come in various sizes up to and exceeding 128 MB. This is for save transfer between different consoles only, as normal saving will be handled internally by the PS3. The controller ports have also been changed, made smaller and circular, in order to make room for four controller ports on the machine's front. It was a little disappointing that Sony has not made the switch to wireless controllers, the success of which Nintendo's WaveBird controller has demonstrated. The changed controller ports have not affected backwards compatibility, however, a main draw for Sony's consoles. More on that later.
The main meat of the new console, of course, is its internal workings. And the PS3 does not disappoint. The console comes equipped with a 50 GB HDD utilizing fiber-optic transfer for maximum speed. 512 MB of total system memory was staggering, and Sony revealed that on the extremely rare chance that that is not enough for developers, a portion of the HDD has been modified to act as scratch RAM. This gives new, unparalleled freedom to developers everywhere. The heart of the machine is the new Cell CPU, jointly developed by Sony, IBM, and other high-profile electronics manufacturers. Sony would not reveal the clock-speed or other specifics regarding the chip, stating that the model in the demo PS3 was an unfinished version and not truly representative of the power of the final console. Either way, the Cell is an immensely powerful beast, and Sony has dedicated it mainly to calculations. Actual graphics and sound are produced by two modified Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer chips working in tandem, with a joint 128 MB of embedded VRAM between them [Ed. note: overkill]. This was a surprising point in the meeting, as the EE/GS chip is currently being used in the PS2. But Sony put aside all possible doubt as to the capabilities of this graphics workhorse with the tech-demos. The demos were projected on a high-definition Sony WEGA at the front of the room. The first demo was created by Koei, and was based on its popular Dynasty Warriors franchise. The Koei spokesperson spoke prior to the demo, and revealed that it was essentially a port of the DW3 engine to the PS3. The original characters had been replaced, however, with 5,000+ polygon models, and about 100 could be onscreen at the same time. In addition, real-time shadowing had been implemented to a greater degree, lighting and particle effects were now much more in evidence, and textures had been completely redone. The speaker emphasized that this was not the next installment in the Dynasty Warriors series, as that game would be using an original engine built around the PS3 hardware.Then, the demonstration began.
The demo jumped into the middle of a heated battle, and several features that the Koei spokesperson had forgotten to mention were immediately evident. The demo ran in progressive scan at 1920 x 1080
resolution, according to a readout in the upper-right corner, and was completely anti-aliased. The environment shown was incredibly expansive, and the characters were unbelievable. Every motion was smooth, muscles flexed and bulged, dust was kicked up and swirled volumetrically as the battle raged. Individual warriors could be heard yelling distinctly over Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The amount of detail was absolutely staggering, and polygonal clipping (where two models seem to go through each other) was nonexistant. It would take far too long to list all the effects that were utilized in the demo, and yet the framerate counter in the corner never dipped below 60. The demo ran for a few minutes and sufficiently wowed the audience.
After that, the investors applauded politely, and the next demo was prepared by Namco, developers of the popular Tekken and Soul Calibur series'. This time there was no pre-demonstration speech, the spokesman merely described features as they showed up. The Namco logo flashed onscreen, and then the display showed a huge, detailed, but empty Japanese temple. Techno-rock played in the background as the camera panned over the scene, and the spokesman described the ability of the PS3 to layer 6 textures in a single pass, with more easily possible by allocating power from the Cell. Then, red lightning split the screen, and the Tekken character Jin Kazama was shown in the center of the temple in Devil form, performing an embu. The camera zoomed in to show the individual detail on the feathers of his wings, and then zoomed in even further. The spokesman explained that, using the two EE/GS chips, it was easy to have dozens of textures for various levels of detail on the same model at different distances, and swapping textures out for actual polygonal detail was simple. The camera panned, and Jin's moving hair, glowing eyes, and detailed skin were showcased. Individual pores could be seen, and the shadowing was nearly true to life. It would be hard to say which model looked better, this real-time version or the pre-rendered model seen in Jin's Tekken 3 ending. (Interestingly, the embu Devil Jin performed consisted of his Tekken 3/Tekken Tag Tournament movelist). Then, the stockholders gasped audibly when Devil Jin morphed smoothly in realtime into the blue-skinned Devil Kazuya Mishima, continuing the embu in his own style without a hitch. At this point, the spokesman calmly pointed out the advanced morph/polygon distortion capabilities of the PS3. Devil Kazuya was surrounded with constant purple lightning which affected the environment's shadowing in real-time. Then, the character took to the air and morphed again, this time into a new, previously unseen character: A Devil Heihachi Mishima, who landed heavily on the floor of the temple, disturbing dust clouds both above and below. Actually, this Heihachi appeared to be modeled more after the Tengu, a demon from Japanese mythology. His skin was dark red to contrast with his white hair, and large black crow's wings sprouted from his back. Tengu Heihachi roared (impressive in 5.1 Surround) and then proceeded to completely destroyed the temple, revealing unseen p
olygonal detail in the structure and demonstrating true-to-life physics as wooden structures broke and came tumbling down. The final scene was a pan-out of a growing dust-cloud where the temple had been, and black thunderheads rolling in overhead. Then the Namco logo faded back in, while the spectators applauded.
The final two short demonstrations were provided by Squaresoft, a close partner of Sony's. Square had two demos to show. The first was a port of a previously seen demo of a scene from the Final Fantasy movie which had been toned down to run on the extreme high-end of PCs. This demo ran without a hitch on the PS3, and in fact could be modified even further using the controller. But the next demo was more impressive: The final character model of Aki Ross was rendered in real-time. Admittedly, the framerate hovered around 20 FPS at best and the background was a plain gray grid, but the fact that the model was being rendered at all was astounding. The controller was used to move around the model and zoom in on her 50,000 individual hairs and detailed eyes.
As unfinished hardware goes, the PS3 is astonishing. The most advanced game, graphically, of this generation (Doom III), would be child's play for the machine to handle. Sony has paid attention to the mistakes made with the PS2, and programming for the PS3 is made much easier by a supplied library of algorithms which can, if the developer chooses, be modified any way they choose.
And the PS3 promises to not just be a game console, but a high-end DVD and CD player as well. With MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 codecs part of the hardware, the visual quality of the images will be crystal clear. And with support for BRD out of the box, it promises to remain cutting-edge for a while.
As to backwards compatibility, that will now be supported by two peripherals, one for PS2 and the other for PS1 games. The peripherals look like stacked black boxes at this point, and plug into the front of the PS3 in the first and fourth controller ports. The front of each peripheral has two Dual Shock controller ports and two memory card ports, allowing for complete backwards-compatibility at a reasonable price. Sony showcased one of its best-selling PS2 games, Final Fantasy X, running through the peripheral. The PS3 performs something extraordinary to many PS2 games: it removes the dreaded "jagginess" that has plagued most releases since its birth. Anti-Aliasing has been implemented in hardware for the first time, and thus shimmering has been reduced as well. This is not a simple blurring effect, as the edges of models are actually sharper than originally. This is the boon that gamers have been hoping for. Sony didn't show changes to PS1 games, but said the improvement would be similar to that already provided by the PS2.
Aus dem Entertaiment Investor Journal August:
At a top investors' meeting for the upper echelon of business associates in Osaka on July fifteenth, Sony Entertainment Corporation revealed the first public details about its next installment in the highly successful Play Station line of videogame consoles. A pre-production version of the machine was unveiled with appropriate tech-specs, and various real-time demonstrations of technical prowess were shown running on the unfinished hardware. The meeting was called in order to quell apprehension among investors that Sony's current market dominance with the Play Station 2 was going to be threatened by newer, more powerful consoles like the Microsoft XBox.
The machine is tentatively named Play Station 3, in keeping with the line's trend of naming new installments incrementally. Its project code-name in Sony Corp., however, was unapologetically named "Ka mi", which translates roughly to "god." This alone should give some idea of how much power Sony has put into the console.
The hardware itself was fairly unimpressive. It was comprised of a simple, unpolished metal box of roughly the same size as the current PS2. The slightly convex front of the machine had four small, circular controller ports along the bottom, and a disc-slot in the center space above, flanked by the power button on the left and the eject button on the right. There is currently no option to position the machine vertically, as there was with the PS2. The PS3 has replaced the disc-tray of the PS2 with a disc-slot, similar to those on some current DVD-players. It has support for several media: 650 MB CDs, 4.7 GB single-layer DVDs, 9 GB dual-layer DVDs, and the new Blu-ray Disc (BRD) format pioneered in part by Sony Corp.. This medium has a storage of 27 GB for a single layer, and up to 50 GB for dual-layer discs. Since the BRDs come in special protective plastic cases to distinguish them from other formats, a moving flap directly above the disc-slot on the PS3 retracts when a BRD is inserted. We will touch on this again later in the article, when discussing the PS3's media playback capabilities.
The controllers were also in pre-production stages, and in undistinguished gray plastic reminiscent of the original Play Station 1 controllers. The new controllers, currently dubbed the Triple Shocks, are slightly wider than the old Dual Shocks and Dual Shock 2s. The button arrangement is identical to the older models, but the left d-pad and analog stick positions have been switched in keeping with the current trend of XBox and GameCube controllers. The d-pad now has a raised plastic circle around it, facilitating the use of diagonals in games, and has been coated with textured rubber. The analog sticks were essentially the same as the previous installments, but have also been coated with the same textured rubber, allowing for greater control and comfort. The shoulder, start, and select buttons have all come through with basically no change whatsoever, and the analog button has been changed to a small
vertical switch. The rumble feature was not demonstrated, but Sony promised that it would be stronger and more precisely controlled. The biggest change, though, is that there is now a small slot at the back of the controller. This slot supports Sony's Memory Stick media cards, which come in various sizes up to and exceeding 128 MB. This is for save transfer between different consoles only, as normal saving will be handled internally by the PS3. The controller ports have also been changed, made smaller and circular, in order to make room for four controller ports on the machine's front. It was a little disappointing that Sony has not made the switch to wireless controllers, the success of which Nintendo's WaveBird controller has demonstrated. The changed controller ports have not affected backwards compatibility, however, a main draw for Sony's consoles. More on that later.
The main meat of the new console, of course, is its internal workings. And the PS3 does not disappoint. The console comes equipped with a 50 GB HDD utilizing fiber-optic transfer for maximum speed. 512 MB of total system memory was staggering, and Sony revealed that on the extremely rare chance that that is not enough for developers, a portion of the HDD has been modified to act as scratch RAM. This gives new, unparalleled freedom to developers everywhere. The heart of the machine is the new Cell CPU, jointly developed by Sony, IBM, and other high-profile electronics manufacturers. Sony would not reveal the clock-speed or other specifics regarding the chip, stating that the model in the demo PS3 was an unfinished version and not truly representative of the power of the final console. Either way, the Cell is an immensely powerful beast, and Sony has dedicated it mainly to calculations. Actual graphics and sound are produced by two modified Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer chips working in tandem, with a joint 128 MB of embedded VRAM between them [Ed. note: overkill]. This was a surprising point in the meeting, as the EE/GS chip is currently being used in the PS2. But Sony put aside all possible doubt as to the capabilities of this graphics workhorse with the tech-demos. The demos were projected on a high-definition Sony WEGA at the front of the room. The first demo was created by Koei, and was based on its popular Dynasty Warriors franchise. The Koei spokesperson spoke prior to the demo, and revealed that it was essentially a port of the DW3 engine to the PS3. The original characters had been replaced, however, with 5,000+ polygon models, and about 100 could be onscreen at the same time. In addition, real-time shadowing had been implemented to a greater degree, lighting and particle effects were now much more in evidence, and textures had been completely redone. The speaker emphasized that this was not the next installment in the Dynasty Warriors series, as that game would be using an original engine built around the PS3 hardware.Then, the demonstration began.
The demo jumped into the middle of a heated battle, and several features that the Koei spokesperson had forgotten to mention were immediately evident. The demo ran in progressive scan at 1920 x 1080
resolution, according to a readout in the upper-right corner, and was completely anti-aliased. The environment shown was incredibly expansive, and the characters were unbelievable. Every motion was smooth, muscles flexed and bulged, dust was kicked up and swirled volumetrically as the battle raged. Individual warriors could be heard yelling distinctly over Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The amount of detail was absolutely staggering, and polygonal clipping (where two models seem to go through each other) was nonexistant. It would take far too long to list all the effects that were utilized in the demo, and yet the framerate counter in the corner never dipped below 60. The demo ran for a few minutes and sufficiently wowed the audience.
After that, the investors applauded politely, and the next demo was prepared by Namco, developers of the popular Tekken and Soul Calibur series'. This time there was no pre-demonstration speech, the spokesman merely described features as they showed up. The Namco logo flashed onscreen, and then the display showed a huge, detailed, but empty Japanese temple. Techno-rock played in the background as the camera panned over the scene, and the spokesman described the ability of the PS3 to layer 6 textures in a single pass, with more easily possible by allocating power from the Cell. Then, red lightning split the screen, and the Tekken character Jin Kazama was shown in the center of the temple in Devil form, performing an embu. The camera zoomed in to show the individual detail on the feathers of his wings, and then zoomed in even further. The spokesman explained that, using the two EE/GS chips, it was easy to have dozens of textures for various levels of detail on the same model at different distances, and swapping textures out for actual polygonal detail was simple. The camera panned, and Jin's moving hair, glowing eyes, and detailed skin were showcased. Individual pores could be seen, and the shadowing was nearly true to life. It would be hard to say which model looked better, this real-time version or the pre-rendered model seen in Jin's Tekken 3 ending. (Interestingly, the embu Devil Jin performed consisted of his Tekken 3/Tekken Tag Tournament movelist). Then, the stockholders gasped audibly when Devil Jin morphed smoothly in realtime into the blue-skinned Devil Kazuya Mishima, continuing the embu in his own style without a hitch. At this point, the spokesman calmly pointed out the advanced morph/polygon distortion capabilities of the PS3. Devil Kazuya was surrounded with constant purple lightning which affected the environment's shadowing in real-time. Then, the character took to the air and morphed again, this time into a new, previously unseen character: A Devil Heihachi Mishima, who landed heavily on the floor of the temple, disturbing dust clouds both above and below. Actually, this Heihachi appeared to be modeled more after the Tengu, a demon from Japanese mythology. His skin was dark red to contrast with his white hair, and large black crow's wings sprouted from his back. Tengu Heihachi roared (impressive in 5.1 Surround) and then proceeded to completely destroyed the temple, revealing unseen p
olygonal detail in the structure and demonstrating true-to-life physics as wooden structures broke and came tumbling down. The final scene was a pan-out of a growing dust-cloud where the temple had been, and black thunderheads rolling in overhead. Then the Namco logo faded back in, while the spectators applauded.
The final two short demonstrations were provided by Squaresoft, a close partner of Sony's. Square had two demos to show. The first was a port of a previously seen demo of a scene from the Final Fantasy movie which had been toned down to run on the extreme high-end of PCs. This demo ran without a hitch on the PS3, and in fact could be modified even further using the controller. But the next demo was more impressive: The final character model of Aki Ross was rendered in real-time. Admittedly, the framerate hovered around 20 FPS at best and the background was a plain gray grid, but the fact that the model was being rendered at all was astounding. The controller was used to move around the model and zoom in on her 50,000 individual hairs and detailed eyes.
As unfinished hardware goes, the PS3 is astonishing. The most advanced game, graphically, of this generation (Doom III), would be child's play for the machine to handle. Sony has paid attention to the mistakes made with the PS2, and programming for the PS3 is made much easier by a supplied library of algorithms which can, if the developer chooses, be modified any way they choose.
And the PS3 promises to not just be a game console, but a high-end DVD and CD player as well. With MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 codecs part of the hardware, the visual quality of the images will be crystal clear. And with support for BRD out of the box, it promises to remain cutting-edge for a while.
As to backwards compatibility, that will now be supported by two peripherals, one for PS2 and the other for PS1 games. The peripherals look like stacked black boxes at this point, and plug into the front of the PS3 in the first and fourth controller ports. The front of each peripheral has two Dual Shock controller ports and two memory card ports, allowing for complete backwards-compatibility at a reasonable price. Sony showcased one of its best-selling PS2 games, Final Fantasy X, running through the peripheral. The PS3 performs something extraordinary to many PS2 games: it removes the dreaded "jagginess" that has plagued most releases since its birth. Anti-Aliasing has been implemented in hardware for the first time, and thus shimmering has been reduced as well. This is not a simple blurring effect, as the edges of models are actually sharper than originally. This is the boon that gamers have been hoping for. Sony didn't show changes to PS1 games, but said the improvement would be similar to that already provided by the PS2.
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