March 15, 2006
Playstation 3 Information
So Sony finally issued more information on the PS3. It will launch globally in November with about 2 million units (Yikes! Talk about lines around the world for that one). The company vows to sell 6 million by March of 2007. The PS3 will have a basic LIVE-like online service for free and be fully backwards compatible with PS1 and PS2 games (upscaled to HD). The final dev kits will come out in June, which means we won't see many real games until late next year. It will require an upgradeable 60GB hard-drive and run a Linux OS. Sony is also going to launch a $199 Sony PSP SKU just for the basic unit. They will come out with a web browser and offer PS1 game emulation off a Memory stick. The reason for the delay is finalizing the copy protection scheme for the Blu-ray drive, which will be able to read 50GB on a dual-layer disk.With such a low volume launch and the obvious lack of games, PS3 is obviously not ready for prime-time till late in 2007. Shipping out final dev kits in June is ridiculous. Microsoft, this is your opportunity to gain huge ground this Christmas and well into next year. Take advantage of it.
