news

LATEST

SCEI president, Ken Kutagari has officially announced that a prototype Playstation 2 will be revealed to the public around the 17th of September this year!...........

"A lot of people have been asking when they can see the next generation Playstation. Were pushing to unveil a prototype at the Tokyo games show on September 17th" said Kutaragi at the recent Playstation Awards. Further details on the price, games etc will also be released at the Tokyo game show, and as soon as I know, i'll put it up her

At Sony's news release, Kutaragi revealed that the CPU to be used in the Playstation 2 will start mass production in July and the Playstation 2 is to be mass produced in October (although this is only the Japanese version, American and Euro PSX2's will start production later). Rumors that have surrounded the PSX2's production shortages with memory and CPU silicon have now been ruled out. Sony have said that they are already into mass producing the memory used in the PSX2 and the CPU silicon production will have started by the time you read this.

Sony have just released pictures of their graphics synthesizer which I'll try and get hold of soon, this baby can process graphics at over 5 times the speed and quality of the new Voodoo 3 3000! top graphics methinks.

OLD NEWS

Earlier this year Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) made an annoucement which delighted gaming fans across the world................

PLAYSTATION 2 IS HERE!!!

Well, almost anyway..........well alright then its probably about a year off for most of us in the West, but what the hey? PSX2 has been officially announced and I must say that if Sony deliver the promised, well how can I put this?, in the famous words of Homer Simpson..........

WOO-HOO!                                                                                                                      But before we get too excited, apparently there is a problem with some of the hardware for PSX2:

The Direct RamBus (RDRAM) memory which is going to be used in the PSX2 hasn't even been properly developed yet, with companies still in the developing stage of this Super Memory. Although, I am informed that production will soon start and there will probably be a significant amount of RDRAM ready for a Christmas release date in Japan.

Again, the PSX2 will use 0.18 Silicon for its main CPU core which is in very short supply and is not expected to be in the mass production process until the last quater of the year. "0.18" is the process used to make silicon used in microchips and the smaller the number, the faster it will be.

But, if all goes to plan for Sony, which I think it will, its gonna be arse-whipping time for the Dreamcast and the N64, Sony's real threat may come from Nintendo's next-generation machine code named "Project Dolphin" as the tech specs for this machine look twice as good as PSX2's. But then again, the N64 is better technically than the current PSX but that didn't make it better. Whatever happens in the next year or two its gonna benefit the gaming community as a whole.

MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS

Sony Computer Entertainment have also recently confirmed the inclusion of a modem in the PSX2, the speed, interface, make and weather it is Internal/External is unknown but things are looking brighter and brighter for the PSX2. They have also confirmed that the Dolby AC-3 audio format will be used. The PSX2 may not only be a contender in the video games sector, but also with DVD Movie player's. Imagine being able to watch DVD movies in Dolby Surround Sound on your 25" TV screen and being able to play the latest greatest games and being able to connect to the net using just your games console! WOW!

Also Sony have made official announcements that the PSX2 will be 100% fully backwards compatible with PSX1, I imagine this includes joypads, memory cards, games etc.

Just for the hell of it, here is a picture of the PSX2 at the moment, obviously it is still in PC development form:

Cool hey?