What’s the word I’m looking for? Game console? Hmmm, no. Gaming station? Hmmm, nope. Toy? Heh, not that one either… But supercomputer sounds great!
That’s how Sony refers to their newest addition to the PlayStation family. Sure it’s powerful but isn’t calling it a supercomputer going a little too far? Time will tell. The console will ship with a hard drive and with Linux preinstalled (no information on which distro it will be). This might be a great idea – you’ll get some computer functionality and the OS itself won’t cost Sony that much (although I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a commercial distro – even support would be easier for them this way).
Categories: Computers, Game Consoles, Linux, Open Source, Software, Technology Tags: computer functionality, distro, game, hard drive, Linux, linux preinstalled, newest addition, playstation, preinstalled, sony, supercomputer
The new Sony PlayStation 3 with the Cell processor comes in 3 colors: white, gray and black. The case is very nice and shiny. The graphics are powered by nVidia and SCEI, has XDR Rambus memory and Blu-Ray discs are supported. A dual layer Blu-Ray disk can hold up to 54GB of data; imagine the possibilities. HDTV displays and DVD support are standard. A detachable 2,5″ HDD will be supported as well. No other console of the new generation will be as backwards compatible as the Playstation 3. Games from Playstation 1, 2 and 3 will work!
To be honest I’m not sure why Microsoft named their new console X-Box 360. 360 is a full circle, in other words nothing has changed, they’re where they started… The HDD in the 360 is detachable and the whole console is powered by 3 custom-made (by IBM) cores running at 3.2 GHz each. DDR3 memory is used for the unit. Everything else seems pretty much a standard in the next generation consoles. Microsoft now has an addon that supports HD-DVD discs.
Details on Nintendo’s Revolution (now known as the Wii) console have been released as well. The case is very small (the size of 3 DVD cases stacked together) and comes in a variety of colors. DVD playback is of course, a must, but worth mentioning is that Nintendo Gamecube games will play as well. I’m not expecting the Revolution console to take any market share away from Sony or Microsoft… 
Bottom line: Playstation 3 and X-Box 360 will fight for the market share with both having very good hardware and the Playstation having many more games available. It’s hard to tell how things will look in 1 or 2 years. Nintendo Revolution, on the other hand, shouldn’t change much
PS: Microsoft’s X-Box 360 site doesn’t work too well under Firefox. Poor cross-platform design 
Go figure… (update: 9/22/2006 – the site has been fixed and works under FireFox as well.)
Links:
Microsoft X-Box 360:
http://www.xbox.com/en-us/xbox360/default.htm
Nintendo Revolution:
Press Release
Sony Playstation 3:
http://e3.playstation.com/hardware/ps3/index.aspx
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