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The PlayStation 3 is Sony's seventh generation era video game console, third in the PlayStation series. It is the successor to the PlayStation 2 and will compete against Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii. The PS3 is scheduled for release on November 11, 2006 in Japan and November 17, 2006 worldwide, and will ship in two initial configurations.

Sony officially unveiled the PS3 to the public on May 16, 2005 during an E3 conference. A functional version of the console was not at E3 2005 or the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although at both events, demonstrations were held on devkits (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) and comparable PC hardware, and video footage based on the predicted PS3 specifications was produced (e.g. Mobile Suit Gundam). It wasn't until E3 2006 that games were shown on actual PlayStation 3 systems.

Thus far, public reception of the console has been mixed with the Sony stock market price declining partially due to worries about the future of the PlayStation brand and its profitability. However, Sony's chief has cited its widespread developer support and advanced "future-proofed" technologies such as Blu-ray and the Cell microprocessor, as ensuring the continued success of the PlayStation platform.

System configuration

Sony's initial retail strategy for the PlayStation 3 will involve two different configurations that are detailed in a Sony press release. The "premium" version of the PlayStation 3 will come with an internal 60 GB hard drive, Wi-Fi connectivity, HDMI output, and multiple flash memory card readers out of the box. Along with a silver trim and Spider-Man typeface style logo. The second and alternate configuration of the console will have a 20 GB internal hard drive but will not feature Wi-Fi, HDMI, or a memory card reader. The hard drive is upgradeable, and memory card and Wi-Fi support can be added through adaptors, but the HDMI support is not upgradeable.

The lack of HDMI output in the 20 GB model (as with the Xbox 360 or player lacking HDCP) could potentially cause problems with restricted output resolution on Blu ray video. An ICT flag can be set by content producers, which forces non-HDCP video down to a pixel resolution of 960×540 (50% greater than DVD-Video at NTSC resolution, and 35% more than PAL resolution). SCEA president Kaz Hirai stated that it is "too early to speculate at this point" whether movie producers will activate the ICT feature. According to German publisher Spiegel, a behind-the-scenes agreement was made to not enforce the ICT flag on next-generation optical formats until at least 2010, or possibly even 2012.

Release data and pricing

David Wilson, Head of Public Relations at Sony Computer Entertainment UK, stated that both models will likely be sold in the UK market, but both may not be available at launch. Previously, Sony Computer Entertainment UK Marketing Director Ray Maguire had stated that only the 60 GB version would be available at launch.

In Japan, Sony has opted to go with an open pricing scheme for the 60 GB model, allowing retailers to set a price point themselves. Rakuten, one of the biggest Japanese online retailers, has set their price point at ¥71,800, or ¥75,390 with taxes added (about 675 USD).

The PS3 has received mixed reviews for its price. It is significantly higher than its same-generation competition in all world markets. Sony has publicly defended its pricing model, citing the PS3's higher performance and inclusion of a Blu-ray drive, of which stand-alone players cost an average of US$1,000. Prices may be subjected to change.

Game pricing

There have also been statements by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) President and CEO Kaz Hirai suggesting games could cost a bit more than the US$60 standard for higher-priced games. Futureshop, a Canadian electronics store, has priced each game at C$74.99 (about US$66 ).

Also shown at E3 was a Final Fantasy VII technical demo of the opening sequence remade for the PlayStation 3. Square-Enix has stated it has no plans to remake FFVII.

Backward compatibility

Sony has stated that the PlayStation 3 will have backward compatibility with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, and that every PS1 and PS2 game that observes its respective system's TRC (Technical Requirements Checklist) will be playable on PS3 at launch.SCE president Ken Kutaragi asked developers to adhere to the TRC to facilitate compatibility with future PlayStations, stating that the company was having some difficulty getting backward compatibility with games that had not followed the TRCs. "Either it's accidental or on purpose; there's actually a lot of games that don't follow the TRC.". Initial PS3 units will include the CPU/GPU combination chip used in slim PS2 (EE+GS) to achieve backward compatibility.

The PlayStation 3 does not include interfaces for legacy PlayStation devices, but there will be an adapter for the memory cards so you can save your PS1/PS2 data on to a virtual memory card in the hard drive. USB devices for PlayStation 2 may be compatible with PlayStation 3. PlayStation 3 can use Memory Sticks to store save data for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 software.

Software development

The PlayStation 3, unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, is based on open and publicly available application programming interfaces.

Open standards

• COLLADA, an open, XML-based file format for 3D models.
• PSGL, a modified version of OpenGL ES 1.0 (OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant except for the use of Cg instead of GLSL), with extensions specifically aimed at the PS3
• OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations.
• OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics.

Sublicensed

• AGEIA's PhysX SDK, NovodeX.
• Epic's Unreal engine 3.0 framework.
• Havok's physics and animation engines.
• Pixelux's Game Asset Synthesis Technology, a toolkit for advanced procedural synthesis and the Digital Molecular Matter engine plug in for Maya and 3d Studio Max
• Cg 1.5, Nvidia's C-like shading language.
• SpeedTree RT, a programming package produced by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. that aims to produce high-quality virtual foliage in real time.
• Kynogon's Kynapse 4.0 "large scale A.I."

Considered standards

The list of standards they are reported to be considering includes:

• IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol.

Sony has selected several technologies and arranged several sublicensing agreements to create an advanced software development kit for developers. In addition, in 2005 Sony purchased SN Systems, a former provider of Microsoft Windows-based development tools for a variety of console platforms; including PlayStation 2, GameCube, PSP and Nintendo DS to create additional GNU development tools. Sony is providing all developers with GNU toolchains where SN Systems will provide customer-oriented wrappers for GNU tools at an additional cost.

Interface and operating system

The PlayStation 3 version of the Cross Media Bar demonstrated at E3 2006 (video) included options for different user profiles, the ability to explore photos, play music and movies from the hard drive, compatibility for a USB Keyboard and Mouse, a full Internet browser and a Friends menu. In a separate demo Sony presented the "Marketplace" where users can buy and download music.

Linux will be pre-installed on the PS3 hard drive. Currently it is unknown if Linux will be the operating system used to run everything, including the Cross Media Bar, or if the system will operate as a dual boot environment, where Linux would be loaded from the Cross Media Bar menu.

Online services (PNP)

In response to Microsoft's successful Xbox Live network, Sony announced a unified online service for the PlayStation 3 console at the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing meeting in Tokyo; tentatively titled "PlayStation Network Platform". Sony has confirmed that the service will be always connected, free and include multiplayer support. However developers are permitted to charge a subscription fee, as is common with MMO games.

Hardware specifications

Unless otherwise noted, the following specifications are based on a press release by Sony at the 2005 E3 Conference, and slides from a Sony presentation at the 2006 Game Developer's Conference.

The floating point performance of the whole system (CPU + GPU) is reported to be 2.18 TFLOPS. PlayStation 3's Cell CPU achieves 256 GFLOPS single precision float and is reported at around 26 GFLOPS double precision.

Central processing unit (CPU)

3.2 GHz Cell processor: one PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" and seven 3.2 GHz Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The PPE has a 512 KB L2 cache and one VMX (AltiVec) vector unit. Each of the eight SPEs is a RISC processor with 128-bit 128 SIMD GPRs and superscalar functions. Each SPE has 256 KB of L1 cache/software-addressable 4.8 GHz SRAM, called the "Local Store".

Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield. If one of the eight has a manufacturing defect, it is disabled without rendering the entire unit defective. Additionally, one of the seven active SPEs is reserved for use by the system's OS, leaving six SPEs directly available to applications.

Graphics processing unit (GPU)

• Based on NVIDIA NV47 architecture
• Clocked at 550 MHz
• 128-bit DDR memory interface
• 211.2 GFLOPS programmable (384 FLOPS per clock), 1.8 TFLOPS total
• Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
• 136 shader operations per clock ( * 550 MHz = 74.8 billion / second, 100 billion with CPU)
• 24 2D texture lookups per clock ( * 550 MHz = 13.2 billion / second)
• 33 billion dot products per second (51 billion dot products with CPU)
• 128-bit pixel precision
• S3TC 5 to 1 texture compression site

Memory

Total 512 MB, split into:

• 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz)
• 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz

System bandwidth

• 204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)
• Cell FlexIO Bus: 35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5 GHz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)
• 51.2 GB/s SPE to local store
• Experimental Sustained bandwidth for some SPE-to-SPE DMA transfers - 78 to 197 GB/s.
• 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz / 8 bits to a byte
• 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) / 8 bits to a byte
• RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
• System Bus (separate from XIO controller) 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read

Interfaces

Video

• Composite
• S-Video
• Component video (output up to and including 1080p)
• HDMI 1.3 port (Digital video output; 60 GB model only)

Supported resolutions

Sound

• S/PDIF optical output for digital audio up to 7.1 sound
• Dolby TrueHD (compatible sound equipment required)
• DTS-HD
• LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor)

Communications

• One Gigabit Ethernet Port
• USB 2.0 (x4)
• Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
• Wi-Fi (60 GB model only), IEEE 802.11b/g

Power supply

The power supply will be built into the console. A standard 3-pin IEC connector is present at the base of the console.

Storage

• Optical
  • Blu-ray Disc (2x = 9.0 MB/s) PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-R/RE (*Region free for gaming)
  • DVD (8x = 11.0 MB/s) PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD ± R/RW
  • CD (24x = 3.5 MB/s) PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW
  • SACD (2x) SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD
• Hard disk drive: Pre-Installed 20 GB / 60 GB (depending on package), 2.5" SATA150, detachable/upgradeable, with Linux pre-installed.
• Flash memory interfaces (60 GB model only) - Memory Stick, CompactFlash, SD/MMC

Controller

E3 2005 showcased Sony's "boomerang" design, which was abandoned due to poor public reaction and replaced with an upgraded wireless version of the DualShock 2 at E3 2006. The new controller features finer analogue sensitivity, more trigger-like R2 and L2 buttons, an Xbox 360 like central button, and an USB mini-B port for charging the internal battery and use for wired play. There are four numbered LED indicators, to identify and distinguish multiple wireless controllers. The major feature revealed was the ability to sense both rotational orientation and translational acceleration.. Games that use this feature will come with an option to turn it off. Sony has stated that because of these sensors, the rumble feature of the previous controllers has been removed, reasoning that the vibration interferes with motion-sensing. Haptics developer Immersion Corporation (who successfully sued Sony) expressed skepticism of Sony's rationale, and has since introduced tilt and motion-sensing which filters out vibration in software.

Other information

Sony revealed PS3 would use heat pipes, and the system will be as quiet as a slim PS2 ~29dB (A). The PlayStation 3 is approximately 5 kg (11 lbs), 9.8 cm × 32.5 cm × 27.4 cm (3.9 in. × 12.8 in. × 10.8 in.)