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Well, I must say I'm not surprised about the 3D controller. (where's the "fourth" dimension coming from, anyway? I never understood people's logic for adding another axis that doesn't exist, just like claiming traditional input fare is "3D" when it's 2-dimensional) As I've stated some times before (but, oddly enough, I don't think once on the TG Forumz) Nintendo, regardless of their market share, somehow manages to be the "harbinger" of new controller types; most gamers, sadly, don't realize that the analog-stick based controller didn't really exist until 1996, with the introduction of the Nintendo64. Likewise, shoulder buttons first appeared with the SNES's controller in 1991, and prior to the NES, digital pads, for some reason, where only found on mobile devices.
What does surprise me, though, is the price. Not the $500US (we're not kidding anyone here; just round it) base model price, but that there's ANOTHER one, that's MORE EXPENSIVE. $600US is pretty darn steep for a gaming console; That makes it twice as expensive as the Playstation2 and Xbox upon launch, and three times the price of the Game Cube upon its launch, as well as three times the assumed launch price of the Wii.
Yes, I do see a lot of features; a larger hard drive to appease those looking for a "numerical difference," for one. (though in reality, I think the price difference between a 20GB and 60GB drive, even a 2.5" one, would be perhaps only $30-40US)
However, some things do catch me; for one, there's the all-important HDMI port; it's effectively a requirement for a true HD machine; component cables are really only capable of up to 720p or 1080i, and even then, they do appear to be slightly lossy. HDMI would imply that the console can actually run at 1080p, contradicting Sony's statements that suggested otherwise. Since HDMI is a digital input/output, and needs no RAMDAC, it appears that there'd be no reason for the console to
not have full 1080p support. Perhaps what was implied was that the console wouldn't be able to count on rendering at 60fps @1920x1080. This is vastly different from not being able to do progressive scan; many Xbox 360 titles, for instance, are capped at 30fps regardless of the resolution, though there's still the imaging improvement with progressive scan displays; the lack of "tearing lines" (or whatever the popular term is for it) is a plus in just about anybody's book.
What perhaps REALLY hit me, and made me go back and check, was the comment on media support;
the Playstation3 would be able to support not just Sony Memorysticks, but also SecureDigital and CompactFlash cards as well?!
Somebody wake me up, because this does not seem like Sony! Their name has, over the past decades, become synonymous with refusal to us generic formats, instead using their own proprietary ones, ones that with few exceptions went the way of the dinosaurs - And even in all those exceptions, of which I can name TWO (CD, DVD) that actually survived, but perhaps largely because Sony was far from the only creator; Phillips was behind the CD, and Sony, in working with the DVD, was more of jumping on the bandwagon that actually pionnering it.
Personally, I think that such support is good news. The cynical side of me suggests that, like perhaps their re-designed controller, they're "aping" Nintendo, whose Wii will have a slot for using highly standard (as well as vastly faster and cheaper) SecureDigital cards, rather than their own format. Either way, it can't really be bad; perhaps this will mean an end to the search and high prices of buying YET ANOTHER type of media card to support the new console. Rather, we can pull from whatever stack of cards we already have. It's even good to me to see the 10th device to actually use Sony's memorysticks. (yes, that
is a facetous number)
As for the graphical power of the machine... I'll remain skeptical at this point, until I can see one of them myself. As unfortunately, I'm not a noteworthy person in "the industry," so that obviously won't be at E3. But needless to say, while I'll admit it's likely pretty impressive, I've found, over the years, that even those in the gaming/technology media often don't have a sharp eye when it comes to discerning what's at work to bring them their 3D imagery. Particularly if it's something that's, even in the slightest degree, in some ways, superior, or somehow better, than what they've seen before.
The CPU? I'm a bit ambivilant about that. It might turn out to be powerful, but as far as I've seen, the SPEs are highly limited in function, even though each appears to contain four independant floating-point units. Obviously, we've seen that they can be used for video encoding rather well; each unit can apparently handle a full HD MPEG-2 encoding stream (to laymen, this means turning HD video into aa form you'll see on a DVD) in real time. Impressive in some ways, but quite less than what you'd expect out of, say, any 3.2GHz x86 processor, with the identical (theoretical) floating-point muscle.
The graphics chip, of course, may be an entirely different story. Specs thus far give us the highest transistor count ever seen for an nVidia chip, at (correct me if I'm off) some 350 million transistors; by comparison, the 7800GTX's chip weighed in at 302M transistors (
link) and the 7900GTX actually
shaved off some transistors with a more efficient design, and came down to something like 290M.
However, regardless of the exact count, I would theorize that this suggests something of similar power. Not overwhelming, particularly compared to even today's PC cards, as the X1900XTX, and possibly even the 7900GTX, is likely more powerful, (note that the X1900XTX's R580 has roughly 381M transistors, and ~2.8 times the shader power of the entirety of the Xbox 360's Xenos) but still likely to produce a good ammount of graphics punch.
Coming back after all of these features, perhaps the $600US price tag isn't all that bad. After all, one should note that as of now, no HD-DVD players seem to exist for less than $1,000US. Perhaps the allure of getting, by a serious margin, the cheapest possible HD-disc movie player on the market might fuel sales even against the big, black mark that the price otherwise is. I've guessed for over a year now that such is perhaps Sony's bet, and I guess we'll see in the year to come if it was a wise bet or not.