September 11, 2005

New Playstation 3 News and Details - PS3

These quotes come from PlayStation Magazine. I like the fact the new Grand Theft Auto is well in production and Sony is blatantly ripping off Xbox Live. You have to love competition. Other potential ground-breakers are new PS3 titles from the Ico team, new Indiana jones movie spin-off, and a Super Street Fighter??? Also executives are still hinting at a world wide console launch in the first half of 2006. However my gut still says we see a delay at least for the United States.

PSM's information came from developers. Some on the record, some off.

....particularly when it comes to ease of development for the system: how it compares to PS2, and more importantly, Xbox 360. "The *****ing this round sounds opposite of the last. Both are friendly, but the PS3 may actually be friendlier," reports one of out PS2 and Xbox 360 development sources, who wished to remain anonymous. "People are finding that the [xbox] 360 has some stupid bottlenecks."

Developers will soon learn more about the ins-and-outs of creating PS3 games, as Sony has started taking orders for final development hardware to be delivered by December. At that time, game creators will be able to tell just how much mroe extra polish they can put on their titles without worrying about them crapping out on a retail PS3.

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The latest on PS3's power

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"Once we have final hardware for both next-gen systems, we'll have a much better idea of how they compare, but the general consensus right now is that the PS3 is considerably more powerful than the X360 across the board," said another source. "It's important to get a good idea of which is the most powerful soon, since multi-platform games will need to be either ported down from PS3 to 360 or vice-versa."

Speaking of multi-platforming games, another of our next-gen contatcts chimed in with the following when we asked them, flat out, which system will ultimatelyl have the best looking games. "Only the games that are exclusive to tiether system will be real technical showcases,"adding "There will be strong points for each, but the cross platform games will most likely look and perform almost identically."

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PS3's Promising Online Support

In addition to all of the cool Wi-Fi-based PSP to PS3 functionality we've previously reported Sony is working on (transferring media and save data between the two anywhere in the world at a hotspot), there's some actual news to report on the online gameplay front. not only that, it's pretty good. (Although the gradual diminishing of Sony's PS2 online plans over that console's life will always have us taking their goals in this department with a grain of salt.)

PS3 is slated to have an actual online community ready to back it up on day one, complete with friend tracking, message services, and a central hub for everything. If it sounds like xbox Live, it should. Sony has been folloowing M$'s moves, and, well, plans to copy most of them, according to our sources. "They [Sony CEA] have a whole division that was put in place after the Network Adaptor was released for PS2 that bascially dropped focus on PS2 and moved to planning the PS3," says one designer working on an online PS3 title. "They knew that early that they were not going to compete during the current gen."

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Ramping up for an early release?
There's been a lot of talk about Sony's E3 2005 proclamation that PS3 would ship in the spring of 2006. A lot. Would it be in Japan only, or were they talking about the U.S. too? Questioned further on the topic, Sony execs have since stuck to their guns, saying that the system would be available worldwide before next summer.

PS3 will have a limited playable presence at TGS 2005. Sony has told PSm to expect a significant presence for the system at January's CES in Las Vegas. If a March launch does occur, it owuld be accompanied by only a couple of first-party titles, another two to three from EA, and one title at most from their other thrid parties. Madden NFL football developer Tiburon has had PS3 dev hardware longer than almost any other U.S. developer. Rockstar North has had stable kits since at least August 2005.

There's a lot of talk among the PS3 developer community about the importance of being first-to-market, or at least not letting M$ get too much of an installed base before PS3 ships. The general feeling is that Sony considers xbox 360 to be a possible contender in this generation, so they're not going to just rest on their laurels. In fact, developers report that Sony Japan is taking a much more hands-on role in the U.S. luanch of PS3 than it did with PS2 or PSP. Shades of the PS2 luanch, there.

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GTA 4: Rebuilt from the Ground Up

The next GTA game is going to look really good. Actually, maybe that should be feel really good. It's a no-brainer that on the most powerful games console yet, one of our favorite series will have better graphics. But, base on developer Rockstar North's technical research, GTA4 will be more about immersion than just mere eye candy.

Rockstar North is creating a specialized game engine for PS3 that will bring GTA 4 to life to a degree that the PS2 games could only hint at. Speciafially, they're going to be using the high data transfer bandwidth of the Cell CPU, RSX GPU, and Blu-ray Disc to use several streams of game info simultaneously. The game's city- unfortunately yet to be even hinted at- will still be free roaming and seamless, but broken down into smaller, more deatailed areas at the engine level, into which the game designers are going to eb able to pour more textures, more oject variety, and tons of details (such as discareded soda cans with their own physics), just for starters. The goal is a city that's less repetitive and where everything - and everyone- looks and acts mroe like they would in the real world on every level.

MGS 4 Becomes a War Zone

One source has described the game to PSM as "a cross between Rambo and Black Hawk Down," with Solid Snake plunged into the middle of a high-intesntiy urban war zone where artillery is taking out cover all aroudn him and AI controlled "sidekicks" fight alongside him as if they were actual human-controlled characters. The new 3D camera will paly a big role in surviving the fight quarters and constantly changing cover.
Kojima has an update on teh game planned for TGS.

Now onto the new list of the gamelineup for the PS3...

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The PS3 Game Lineup So Far

Activision
Spider-Man 3

Bandai
Mobile Suit Gundam

EA
NFSU 3
Madden NFL 2007
Medal of Honor
NBA Live 2007
Fight Night Round 3
Def Jam 3
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007
New SSX
New Burnout

Majesco
The Darkness

Buena Vista Interactive
Pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest

Capcom
Return of a "beloved fighting franchise" ( Super Street Fighter?)
New Ghouls N' Ghosts
DMC 4
RE 5

Rockstar
GTA 4
Western-themed action game (likely Red Dead Revolver 2)

Sony
New Team ICO project ( !!! )
Genji 2
Warhawk
I-8
The Getaway 3
Killzone 3
GT 5
New Hot Shots Golf
MotorStorm
Eyedentify
Heavenly Sword
Formula One 2007
New Wipeout
Sony Online Entertainment
Marvel comics MMORPG
Untitled Fantasy MMORPG

Namco
Tekken 6
Ridge Racer 6

Eidos
Tomb raider Next-gen

Lucas Arts
Star Wars: Clone Wars
indiana Jones (launch with new movie)

Konami
MGS4
Suikoden V
Castlevania

Midway
UT 2007
Mortal Kombat
Stranglehold

Atair
Test Drive Unlimited

THQ
New WWE Project

Sega
Fifth Phantom Saga
Sonic The Hedgehog
Condemned: Criminal Origans

Tecmo
Fatal Frame 4

Ubisoft
Prince of Persia 4
Killing Day

Koei
Ni-oh

Also in developemnt...
Dark Secotr, Dirty Harry, Battle Angel, Alita, Project Avalon, Endless Saga, Lair, Possession, Death Jr., Metronome, Psychopath, FF XIII, Alan Wake