Sony's PS3 Baby
Kevin Ward, who graduates from St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire, said uncertainty will affect how he votes in November's presidential election. / CBS News
GameCore is a weekly column by CBSNews.com's William Vitka and Chad Chamberlain that focuses on gamers and gaming.
Myself and several other journalists, freelancers and Ben of Game Revolution stood outside for roughly two hours before there was any movement towards our goal of sitting down and being told by Sony how wonderful they are. Where did we go from waiting? To more waiting.
Sony also locked us out of the WiFi network. No access until after the press conference. So much for up to the minute news. So much for my deadline.
After being pumped full of energy drinks and little hot dogs, we were stared at by Culver City police officers. Journalists are bad news and we must be under watch at all times. Granted, most of us wanted to hit things at that point…
There are few things quite as disarming as discussing an ethical abhorrence of Non-Disclosure Agreements and then getting bumped into by a cop and his Glock 9mm.
The inside of the press conference was a weird, misguided attempt to be hip and connect with someone. Techno blared in mindlessness while abstract geometry folded into itself bleeding different colors and shapes.
Looking around at the members of the press here, there is a scant few young journalists. For an industry based on youth's demands, where are the youths themselves?
Finally, after hours of waiting, we were treated to a commercial explaining to us that, really, Sony is somewhere in the realm of being as fantastic as all major religious deities. We were given a brief history of gaming that, interestingly enough, totally ignored the fact that Pinball machines were the home arcade's precursor.
Ken Kutaragi. President and Group CEO of SCEA got on stage quickly afterwards, saying that "he has a dream." That dream's name is the PlayStation 3.
The PS3 is touting a processor named Cell, but wait, hang on there, now Ken's claiming that the PS2 is responsible for DVD's success! I had no idea!
What comes after DVD? Blue Ray! And, as is the trend, the PS3 will be backwards compatible. When Ken was done telling us how absolutely amazing Sony and the PS3 is, IBM proceeded to tell us how truly, shockingly, undeniably Earth-shattering the PS3 is while trying vaguely to follow cue cards.
What came afterwards was an uncomfortable Ken on stage explaining the hardware inside the PS3 while a terrible-looking Power Point presentation played in the background.
I'm not entirely sure what the PS3 has to do with the picture of some canyons and a fast car Sony showed us, but I think that the general message was:
Do you think canyons and cars are awesome? So do we!
How long until the terrible Power Point presentations end?
Technical Specs for the PS3 from their Spiderman Font press kit:
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 edundancy
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: HDD - 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: Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)
Controller:
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB2.0 (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, PlayStation2 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), PlayStation2 DVD-ROM, PLAYSTATION3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PLAYSTATION3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
By William Vitka
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. Myself and several other journalists, freelancers and Ben of Game Revolution stood outside for roughly two hours before there was any movement towards our goal of sitting down and being told by Sony how wonderful they are. Where did we go from waiting? To more waiting.
Sony also locked us out of the WiFi network. No access until after the press conference. So much for up to the minute news. So much for my deadline.
After being pumped full of energy drinks and little hot dogs, we were stared at by Culver City police officers. Journalists are bad news and we must be under watch at all times. Granted, most of us wanted to hit things at that point…
There are few things quite as disarming as discussing an ethical abhorrence of Non-Disclosure Agreements and then getting bumped into by a cop and his Glock 9mm.
The inside of the press conference was a weird, misguided attempt to be hip and connect with someone. Techno blared in mindlessness while abstract geometry folded into itself bleeding different colors and shapes.
Looking around at the members of the press here, there is a scant few young journalists. For an industry based on youth's demands, where are the youths themselves?
Finally, after hours of waiting, we were treated to a commercial explaining to us that, really, Sony is somewhere in the realm of being as fantastic as all major religious deities. We were given a brief history of gaming that, interestingly enough, totally ignored the fact that Pinball machines were the home arcade's precursor.
Ken Kutaragi. President and Group CEO of SCEA got on stage quickly afterwards, saying that "he has a dream." That dream's name is the PlayStation 3.
The PS3 is touting a processor named Cell, but wait, hang on there, now Ken's claiming that the PS2 is responsible for DVD's success! I had no idea!
What comes after DVD? Blue Ray! And, as is the trend, the PS3 will be backwards compatible. When Ken was done telling us how absolutely amazing Sony and the PS3 is, IBM proceeded to tell us how truly, shockingly, undeniably Earth-shattering the PS3 is while trying vaguely to follow cue cards.
What came afterwards was an uncomfortable Ken on stage explaining the hardware inside the PS3 while a terrible-looking Power Point presentation played in the background.
I'm not entirely sure what the PS3 has to do with the picture of some canyons and a fast car Sony showed us, but I think that the general message was:
Do you think canyons and cars are awesome? So do we!
How long until the terrible Power Point presentations end?
Technical Specs for the PS3 from their Spiderman Font press kit:
CPU: Cell Processor
GPU: RSX @550MHz
Memory:
System Bandwidth:
Controller:
AV Output
By William Vitka
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