Sony preps EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE PS3 model

[RepoMan]

Truth or BS? You be the judge. (http://www.techspot.com/news/23979-sony-preps-3rd-version-of-playstation-3.html)
The “media-centric” PlayStation 3 will feature capabilities of consumer electronics devices and will be more focused on digital media content playback, rather than on gaming. Based on claims reportedly made by executives of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., PC Watch web-site reports that the PlayStation 3 “media-centric”-edition will feature anti-vibration mechanism on the Blu-ray disc (http://www.techspot.com/news/23979-sony-preps-3rd-version-of-playstation-3.html#) drive, 512MB XDR memory, more advanced power supply unit and two HDMI connectors to divide audio and video data.
Personally I believe it -- it's as insane as anything else Sony's done with this launch.

Edit: I linked through to xbitlabs and my fucking jaw dropped:
The Japanese web-site noted an executive at SCEI as saying that the price range could be from ¥200 to ¥300 thousand ($1680 to $2520).
Well, I guess if you can't get the gamers to spend $600, go after the high-end audiophiles with money to burn! An additional $1800 -- QUADRUPLE THE COST -- for double the memory, another HDMI connector, an "anti-vibration" drive, and a bigger power supply? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!!!

Double edit: The more I think about it the more demented this is. If this turns out to be true, I will personally shit a brick. Even I can't believe it.

[extarbags]

I believe it. They did it with the PS2, remember?

[tromik]

I believe it. They did it with the PS2, remember?
Didn't that thing bomb?

[Bob Violence]

So badly they ended production early and canceled all plans to release it outside Japan. Kutaragi's talked about a "PSX 2.0" but a) he doesn't seem to be running the shop anymore and b) the alleged list of "features" here is mostly nonsensical even by Sony's standards ("anti-vibration mechanism"? "More advanced power supply"?). I'm also not sure how more RAM would help with AV features -- DVR stuff, maybe, but I don't believe the PSX had substantially more RAM than the PS2.

[RepoMan]

If insanity is repeating the same behavior while expecting a different result, Sony is now verifiably insane.

[Bob Violence]

So this has been verified?

[RepoMan]

Good point :-) Not yet, I guess.

[RobotPants]

and two HDMI connectors to divide audio and video data.

I don't get the purpose of this or even know what device supports it. There are no AV receivers or TVs I'm aware of that take two HDMI connections on the same input. Plus, HDMI 1.3 has like a bajillion times more bandwidth than current HD AV streams are using.

[Bob Violence]

For any Japanese readers out there, the last paragraph (http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2006/1219/mobile360.htm) of the PC Watch article is the relevant one. I ran it through Babelfish and all the stuff mentioned in the English-language articles (2xHDMI, double the RAM, different power source, something about "vibrating measure") is there, but it's mostly gibberish so the context eludes me. I can't tell who their source is (Hisashi somebody, apparently).

[Fugitive]

I don't get the purpose of this or even know what device supports it. There are no AV receivers or TVs I'm aware of that take two HDMI connections on the same input. Plus, HDMI 1.3 has like a bajillion times more bandwidth than current HD AV streams are using.
I think they mean for cases where you want to send the video to the TV, but the audio to a separate receiver.

My first thought was that it should be trivial to just split the audio off of one cable, but a quick search doesn't turn up any splitters like that, just multi-hundred-dollar audio-and-video splitters.

[RobotPants]

Well, the PS3 was originally touted as having two HDMI outputs to run two different 1080p HDTVs at once, so maybe that's what they mean. The part about separating the audio and video is likely wrong.

I think they mean for cases where you want to send the video to the TV, but the audio to a separate receiver.

My first thought was that it should be trivial to just split the audio off of one cable, but a quick search doesn't turn up any splitters like that, just multi-hundred-dollar audio-and-video splitters.

Well, yeah, but again there's no reason to do that. AV receivers with HDMI inputs also have HDMI outputs, so you can route the audio and video through your receiver and then on to your HDTV. Using 2 differnent HDMI cables to split the audio and video doesn't make sense.

[stusser]

Maybe it's not to split the audio and video data, maybe there are two connectors so you can go dual screen! Imagine riding your spikey haired effeminate orphan on a giant chicken around a lush next-gen world on the left 1080P LCD while on the right 1080p LCD you have an auto map, and your spikey haired effeminate orphan's stats and inventory and list of over the top spells, and a little control to play ATRAC music! Hey, the PS3 is the console for rich bastards, and it worked for the nintendo DS. Kinda.

[Bob Violence]

Yeah, that's what they were talking about at E3 before they decided to drop the second HDMI port. The problem (aside from the fact that most people don't have two HDMI-enabled monitors sitting in the same room) is that developers would actually have to support it and that'll never ever happen if you have to buy a ~$2,000 PS3 for that functionality.

[zabuni]

The use two HDMI ports doesn't make any sense. You can already set the audio to use optical out when using HDMI.

[Bob Violence]

The only problem is that the optical out doesn't have enough bandwidth for the lossless codecs (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD) -- you need HDMI or multichannel analog outputs, and the PS3 lacks the latter. (The PS3 can decode True HD to LPCM and output that over the optical out, but you're limited to two channels.) But if they really are going to do an "A/V" version of the PS3, I think it would make more sense to add analog out than a second HDMI port.

[sventest]

If they upped the clocks on the CPU/GPU and RAM, I'd see some value. But for purposes of playing back 1080p video and DD7.1 audio, I'm not sure I see the point (if this is true).

[Bob Violence]

If they upped the clocks on the CPU/GPU and RAM, I'd see some value. But for purposes of playing back 1080p video and DD7.1 audio, I'm not sure I see the point (if this is true).

That's exactly the problem. There's little reason to upgrade the CPU/GPU and RAM unless you intend to use them for gaming purposes, which would require developers to support the "enhanced" PS3 and split the market in two. I'd like to think there's a limit to Sony's incompetence.

[sventest]

Actually, I'd be "sort of happy" with just improved framerates on existing games so devs could continue to just support the lower models as far as I'm concerned.

[The Bitter Cynic]

Still ain't buying one.

[Xemu]

There's pretty much no way this is legit, IMO.

[Gary Whitta]

Didn't that thing bomb?
Yeah, the PSX, it tanked.

[Coca Cola Zero]

Maybe the PSX failed because they didn't charge enough money for it at launch!!

Hah hah.

[K0NY]

Ant-vibration technology? I'll take two!

[Coca Cola Zero]

Those goddamn ants are going to be sorry they ever fucked with the King of New York!

[K0NY]

CCZ, your asshat is showing.

[tromik]

So this has been verified?
I'm verifying it right now! And I'm sorta like a writer for Quarter to Three! I mean, I write content that appears within the labyrinth of its tubes. Kinda.

CONFERRMID!

[Midnight Son]

This will never happen! Sony is just not that stupid!


.... wait.....

[Derek Meister]

Wasn't there talk from Sony early on before much solid information was available on the PS3 of them developing a chipset that could be used across a number of devices?

Such that they could have just a basic gaming console, an advanced media center device and other things inbetween, all sharing the same core?

EDIT: Ah yes ...

To stay there, IBM, Sony, and Toshiba have dreamed up elaborate plans for maximizing Cell's potential. Each partner will use Cell in its own products. Ultimately they want to license it to other manufacturers and even rivals. But the first place Cell will make a splash will be in a living room near you. The PlayStation 3 will be the highest-profile device to take advantage of Cell, but others will follow. Sony, which plans to spend $2 billion to produce the chip, is designing it into everything from flat-panel TVs to home media servers. Toshiba is also working on a Cell TV. Toshiba engineer Yoshio Masubuchi predicts that such a device could connect to other Cell TVs through videoconferences, allow viewers to change channels with hand gestures or voice commands, and permit content and advertising to be customized as it rolls in.

[zabuni]

That's just the Cell itself. It was built to support multimedia really well, so it will be used in things like Blue Ray players, which currently use P4s or other high end processors.

See this article (http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/22/toshiba-wants-to-beat-sony-with-first-non-ps3-cell-device/)

[stusser]

No, it won't. HD-DVD and blu-ray players use pentiums right now because there are no specialized chips to handle the processing in hardware. But there will be. Using hot, expensive, and power hungry general purpose CPUs to decode video is wasteful. It's clearly a stopgap measure that won't last. There'll be a single integrated cheap as chips ASIC that handles both HD-DVD and blu-ray, and everybody will use it.

[zabuni]

Yes, but this is a stop gap measure, a processor that is more situated for processing multimedia content.

[stusser]

Didn't I just say that? I even used the words "stopgap measure".

[rjcc]

No, it won't. HD-DVD and blu-ray players use pentiums right now because there are no specialized chips to handle the processing in hardware. But there will be. Using hot, expensive, and power hungry general purpose CPUs to decode video is wasteful. It's clearly a stopgap measure that won't last. There'll be a single integrated cheap as chips ASIC that handles both HD-DVD and blu-ray, and everybody will use it.

I think the second gen hd dvd players have dropped the pentiums, but I don't know for sure. Also, the pentiums (at least in the initial hd dvd players) were only used to decode the video for the picture-in-picture HDi feature, not the regular movie.

[zabuni]

Whoops, sorry, didn't see that.

[Menzo]

Kutaragi is also the guy who said, multiple times, that the PS3 wouldn't have a disc drive and would just stream its content over the Net.

The guy is a dreamer, but people confuse his visions with directives. It's like concept cars - they're the direction that companies are going in, but they're not real cars and nobody expects them to go into production.

[Brad Grenz]

Kutaragi is also the guy who said, multiple times, that the PS3 wouldn't have a disc drive and would just stream its content over the Net.

Uh... When did he say that?

Anyway. Sounds like a bogus rumor cobbling together half remembered, out of context quotes from over a year ago. Kutaragi has talked about selling PS3s built to order with higher specs, including larger hard drives and more memory, but this is mostly to enhance it as a computing platform and is one of those pie in the sky, years down the line idea. He also talked about a "Cell Storage" device which might be a terabyte class NAS/DVR system with native interoperability with the PS3 as a front end/client.

Also, the splitting HDMI Audio/Video thing is just stupid because if you have an HDMI input on your receiver, it will almost certainly have an output to pass through the video to your display.

[Kitsune]

Okay, first of all, it's really, really bad to report news as news if you can't read the information correctly in it's native tongue.

Second, it is profoundly irresponsible to credit incorrect and false news to a site (even if you don't know it isn't, that's why you check) because you could end up damaging their reputation too and that's just not cool. Especially because the original Japanese site in question is a very professional, well-regarded technology publication with a high standard for writing.

Third, how on earth did could anyone interpret a couple of lines at the end of an article as an announcement or talking about a new version of a PS3? Don't you think, if you had any logical power at all, that would be a headliner?

The article is number three in a series of articles that goes into great depth about other possibilities on the PS3 in a weekly column. Game Watch has done exceedingly, mind-numbingly detailed reports on all three current next-gen consoles, and has frequent corresponding articles about hardware peripherals as well. In addition, they have done a rather interesting series of articles, entitled "A Graphics Lecture for the 3D Game Fan" (a recent one went into detail about the XNA homebrew games creating in Xbox 360). They are split into multiple sections, with an AV site, a games site, a PC site and between have more hardware information for these game machines than you could possibly want. They are usually written from the perspective of giving gamers all the information known about the hardware capabilities and future prospects of those capabilities.

As such, there are two areas in the article that are relevant to this discussion. One is underneath the heading, "Is the PS3 hardware set in stone? Or is it...?" in which the article writer speculates what might happen and what people could expect, and how successful or likely it might be for hardware revisions or new versions of the PS3. None of these claims are made by any of the executives quoted there. The closest we get is that Kawanishi, who is the SCE Corporate Executive Software Platform Development General Manager and the Network Development Dept. Chief, says they are not ruling out updating the specs, so they built the PS3 so that that could happen. The writer then goes on to ask the common question about spliting userbases if you need a version to a play a game, or would all games work on all versions. Kawanishi replies that maybe you'd see games that were exactly the same, but with better performance and a better experience in certain parts.

At no time, is any of this given any official confirmation and furthermore, it's tremendously clear that it's speculation. It's written in that vague language of "maybe" and "perhaps" or "probably".

At the end of the article, it simply mentions an earlier Kutaragi quote wherein the anti-vibration nonsense comes out (which is mentioned in the context of a presumably different casing from the regular PS3) and refers to it as a concrete vision. Then the writer of the article mentions some components he would like to see in such a machine, and then (calling it a selfish prediction) speculates that such a PlayStation, modeled toward the usual AV market, might even not stop at 200,000 yen but might even go to 300,000 yen and would most likely follow the designs of a more consumer electronic-oriented in sales and production.

At the very end, it says that the Sony Audio division and SCE have gotten a project starting announcement via Kutaragi, and there is some concrete movement within the company to plan something. At the last, it wonders what kind of product it would end up being and looks forward to analyzing it as an AV fan. In other words, all we know is that there might be a general AV-marketed release of the PS3 and some sort of project of that nature has started.

No executive at Sony said what the price range would be. No executive at Sony even confirmed that this speculated machine is being worked on.

In fact, the closest thing to a hint is Kawanishi's comment that they don't have any concrete, exact plans, rather they have a roadmap with a certain goal they are planning to meet to utilize Cell as a server. In fact, they someone refute the idea of a new machine, in the Cell area of the article, by flat out saying that before they get execute any wild ideas about Cell they have to make sure that the PS3 is a success first and clear that hurdle.

That is the story of the relevant parts of the future PlayStation hardware in the original article (other than the mild note that there have been arguments within Sony for reaching out to PC content in addition to things like the PlayStation store).

-Kitsune

[Menzo]

Clearly, Kitsune is one of the "factinistas" who are only concerned with the facts.

I don't need the facts, I know the truth, and it's that Kutaragi has said that he, himself, is developing a replacement to the PS3 that will cost $9,000 and only add a slightly larger hard drive with vibration dampening.

[RepoMan]

THANK YOU KITSUNE FOR COMPREHENSIVELY DEMOLISHING THIS RUMOR.

Serious.

Now if only XBit and PC Watch and Techspot would get your message somehow :-)

[Brad Grenz]

THANK YOU KITSUNE FOR COMPREHENSIVELY DEMOLISHING THIS RUMOR.

Serious.

Now if only XBit and PC Watch and Techspot would get your message somehow :-)

But hysterical rumormongering is so damn profitable!

[Midnight Son]

How does K get all this info there in Fresno?

[JM]

Even people in the USA have access to Japanese websites, or forums discussing articles on Japanese websites...