Cell Processor reaches final stage, and PSP to have major showing at TGS 2004

[Private Hudson]

In the wake of one of the gaming industries?biggest shows, SCE announces some prominent news. Sources at Quiter uncovered a slide at Sony's official website that targets what Sony plans to do with the PSP at this year TGS.

Previously unannounced; Sony plans on setting up 100 playable PSP systems, to go along with 20 playable games. While this news seems already good enough for some of us, the slide also indicates that there will be over 100 PSP games to be represented, with many to be shown in video form sources at IGN claim. The opportunity for TGS attendees this year is almost staggering.

With a good number of playable games, and a mass of new footage to previously unannounced titles, the PSP should be one of the best exhibits on the show floor.

Wel keep you updated as more news pours in about the upcoming Tokyo Game Show.

Source: IGN

Japanese publication, Nihon Keizai Shimbun today revealed that the Cell processor has reached its final stage of development. Although no information on the actual chip was given out, a Toshiba company official did restate that "It will be used in such areas as IBM brand computers, Sony game machines and Toshiba home appliances".

Sony are expected to announce a little more about the Cell processor and the PS3 at the upcoming Tokyo Game Show. Stay tuned.

Source: IGN Article

Isn't this all so exciting? :shiggy2:

[Dark Jaguar]

The cell chip is reaching final stages eh? I wonder if development in the PS3 is too far now to reincorporate it? Well, most assuredly the answer to that is yes...

Anyway.... well I guess that's it...

[Private Hudson]

I'm fairly certain that Sony do not have a backup alternative processor in mind for the PS3. And the processor is in mind for "Sony games machines". In fact, I might go as far as say that their work on the Cell processor is in fact... their developement process for the PS3...... Along with developing the other parts to it, of course. ;)

And I believe Sony did eventually state that it will be using the Cell processor in the PS3. Not that I have time right now to find quotes, I'm off to work![/

[Dark Jaguar]

Um, the thing is Hudson, a while back, I think more than a year back, Sony announced that the Cell chip technology was progressing too slowly and they would not be able to use it with the PS3. They essentially had been, to the best of my knowledge, going a totally different route with the PS3. Now that may have been retracted later, I don't know, but that's why I currently assume they aren't going to use the cell chip with the PS3 now, because they announced they wouldn't be able to a while back.

[Private Hudson]

Hmm.. I can't recall, and I'm about to leave again, but I'm pretty sure that was a rumor.. And the rumor wasn't that Sony were going to change plans, but that the PS3 would be delayed..

[Dark Jaguar]

Then obviously you are thinking of a completely different story. Here's a clue, if not a single bit of the details match up, then it's not the thing I'm talking about :D.

[Private Hudson]

I thought perhaps you were mistaken, as the only thing I have heard about the Cell not being on track was a rumor (which was never confirmed, IIRC) about delaying the PS3.

Especially considering it was only about 6 months ago when Sony finally confirmed that the Cell would be the heart of the PS3.

This news is encouraging. :)

[A Black Falcon]

As for the PS3, they've announced for sure that it's going to use Blu-Ray disks... and it'll have backwards compatibility if it's possible.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/21/...08037.html

[OB1]

That was confirmed months ago. This is just a reconfirmation, a reminder I suppose.

And all current BD players are backwards compatible with DVDs, so don't worry about that. Current BDs can store up to 54 GB of data, so Nintendo is really going to have to come up with a comparable medium for the Revolution. They're always behind.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I'd be surprised if whatever Nintendo comes up with has 50 gigs... it'll be a lot larger (than the current one), but how much larger?

Though, 50 gigs raises the question... at this point in time, how in the world do you make a 50 gig game? DVDs get up to 9 and not many actually use that much...

[Dark Jaguar]

I actually can't think of any games that actually use that much data, at all...

Honestly, that much data might come in handy if you could write data TO the disk, but that's it...

So then, I suppose the cell chip thing is right on track. Didn't anyone else hear that story though? I could have sworn someone here posted it, or am I in some alternate reality?

[OB1]

Yeah, I'd be surprised if whatever Nintendo comes up with has 50 gigs... it'll be a lot larger (than the current one), but how much larger?

Though, 50 gigs raises the question... at this point in time, how in the world do you make a 50 gig game? DVDs get up to 9 and not many actually use that much...

Most X-Box exclusives use up most of the 9 gigs, it's the multiconsole titles that usually just use single-layer discs, and that's because of the PS2.

It will be very easy for developers to use up dozens of gigs of space, believe me that won't be a problem. Just like 700 megs was enough during the 32-bit days but not even 1.5 gigs were enough for Nintendo this generation, 9 gigs simply will not cut it next gen. Developers constantly have to take stuff out of GC ports. It happens all of the time. When the standard is 50 GB, developers will start using up that space in no time. Whether that's by using tons of high-res textures, lots of high-quality sound, or even just high-quality FMV, it'll be used. And when it comes to multiconsole titles, Nintendo's ports are going to be lacking once again if they don't use a comparable medium.

Oh and another thing is the fact that millions of PS3s are going to sell solely because they will be among the first BD players on the market. It probably won't sell as many consoles as the PS2 did because of its DVD playback, but it will be a huge draw. Especially if the system launches at a $300 price point.

[Private Hudson]

Oh, and Blu-Ray disc are re-writable, are they not? Well, at least I thought they were when I first heard about them a couple of years ago..

[Dark Jaguar]

Re-writable? If that's so, suddenly the size actually matters. Seriously, textures take up a chunk of space, but 60 gigs worth? I mean, a lot of games on PCs these days reside on the hard disk completely (the disks are just used to verify) and patches and such have done a job of making them take up a large amount of space, but even the latest PC games like Doom 3 don't take up that much space.

[Great Rumbler]

50 gigs? That's 10 more than my harddrive.

[OB1]

That's a tiny hard drive!

Yes blu-rays are re-writable, though it remains to be seen if Sony will let their game discs have re-writable space.

And DJ, the reason why PC games don't take up more than a few gigs on the hdd is because each time the game loads they have to decompress textures and everything, which is one of the reasons why there are such long load times. With a high-capacity disc you wouldn't need to compress and decompress everything non-stop.

[Great Rumbler]

Yes blu-rays are re-writable, though it remains to be seen if Sony will let their game discs have re-writable space.

Seems a bit unlikely that they'd let their disc be re-writable.

[OB1]

Well they might leave some space for save files and possible downloads. That could work as long as it's not too much space.

[A Black Falcon]

I'd be pretty shocked if they have re-writable sections. For one rewritable disks can only be written so many times, so using it for saving would be a bad idea. And it also opens up a massive hole to piracy. Sony will never do that.

[Great Rumbler]

That was my thinking exactly. Piracy always one of the factors that keeps companies from doing stuff like this. Stupid, pirates.

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Arr...

[Private Hudson]

This may be a stupid queston, but how exactly will having a small portion of re-writable disc-space be vulnerable to piracy?

[A Black Falcon]

If you can write to the disk it makes it a lot easier, I'd bet, to find exploits... like when games use a harddrive it makes it easy, and when they are ON a harddrive it's really easy... of course going online also opens them to hacking, but having re-writable sections on the disks themselves seems like it would open up a hole people would not ignore.

And besides, as I said it'd be a major pain to have to write to the DVD every time you get new stuff! It could only really be useful for addon content or something that doesn't change... saving would NEVER work on a CD-styled media.

[OB1]

You wouldn't be able to copy PS3 games to other PS3 discs if there was only 5 gigs of re-writable space.

[Great Rumbler]

Still, Sony will have to consider what pirates may be able to do with something like that, and that alone may cause them to remove that feature.

[OB1]

There's nothing they could do with it that they couldn't do with plain BDs.