Playstation 3 Presentation

Released is a nearly 2 hour long video of Sony's E3 presentation of the PS3 from last year I think. Its interesting to see and shows what Sony was thinking they wanted to do. Basically take the most power home PC computer on the market today, and it might, just might be as good as a PS3. It would also cost around $3000 versus the probably $500 of the PS3. If what they say it can do versus what the final product will actually have, there really is very little reason to get a PC for gaming purposes.

Highlights:

PS3 Specs:
Core:
- PowerPC Core 3.2GHz
- 512 KB L2 cache

Graphics (7x more powerful then the PS2):
- NVidia RSX at 550MHz
- Multi-way parallel FP shader pipeline
- 60fps
- 128 bit floating point pixel precision (current consoles are 32bit)
- 2k x 1k resolution for high-def televisions
- 136 shader operations per cycle
- over 300m transisters (about 5x over current consoles)

Memory:
- 256 MB XDR RAM at 3.2GHz
- 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
- Detachable 2.5'' HDD slot (ie, a laptop hardrive that is easy to upgrade)

Input/Output:
- 6 USB 2.0 ports (4 front, 2 back)
- 1 Memory Stick, SD card slot
- 1 CompactFlash slot
- 1 AV Multi output

Communication:
- Gigabit Ethernet slots
- Built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
- Bluetooth for up to 7 controllers

Disc Media:
- Backwards compatible to PS1 and PS2
- CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, DualDisc
- DVD-video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW
- Blu-ray, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE (ie if PS3 is hot, Sony when the next gen DVD format wars by default.)

Digital Media (formats not specified but assume same as PSP):
- Plays audio
- Plays video
- shows pics

Network:
- Allows online play (that was a gimme) with some internet access (probably Sony only places).
- Allows peer 2 peer connections to transfer data (since Sony has TV, music etc properties, how they limit the exchange of data should be of interest).

Of course its too early to tell as often what the device is theorized to be able to do versus what is done with it are two different things. Also, the older the console gets, the more tricks the developers learn and the more they can get out of it. Finally keep in mind that what the say the product will have as features versus what the final product will have can be two different things. However, if they deliver what they promise, the PS3 is going to be the console to beat. Now if only Sony would learn how to make great fun software with the same skill Nintendo has.