[Uchiha Sasuke]

PS3's Graphics is going to be unbelivable, at least thats what Sony says
as reported by Entertainment Investors Journal, August 2002 edition.

At a top investors' meeting for the upper echelon of business associates in Osaka on July fifteenth, Sony Entertainment Corporation revealed the first public details about its next installment in the highly successful Play Station line of videogame consoles. A pre-production version of the machine was unveiled with appropriate tech-specs, and various real-time demonstrations of technical prowess were shown running on the unfinished hardware. The meeting was called in order to quell apprehension among investors that Sony's current market dominance with the Play Station 2 was going to be threatened by newer, more powerful consoles like the Microsoft XBox.
The machine is tentatively named Play Station 3, in keeping with the line's trend of naming new installments incrementally. Its project code-name in Sony Corp., however, was unapologetically named "Ka mi", which translates roughly to "god." This alone should give some idea of how much power Sony has put into the console.

The hardware itself was fairly unimpressive. It was comprised of a simple, unpolished metal box of roughly the same size as the current PS2. The slightly convex front of the machine had four small, circular controller ports along the bottom, and a disc-slot in the center space above, flanked by the power button on the left and the eject button on the right. There is currently no option to position the machine vertically, as there was with the PS2. The PS3 has replaced the disc-tray of the PS2 with a disc-slot, similar to those on some current DVD-players. It has support for several media: 650 MB CDs, 4.7 GB single-layer DVDs, 9 GB dual-layer DVDs, and the new Blu-ray Disc (BRD) format pioneered in part by Sony Corp.. This medium has a storage of 27 GB for a single layer, and up to 50 GB for dual-layer discs. Since the BRDs come in special protective plastic cases to distinguish them from other formats, a moving flap directly above the disc-slot on the PS3 retracts when a BRD is inserted. We will touch on this again later in the article, when discussing the PS3's media playback capabilities.

The controllers were also in pre-production stages, and in undistinguished gray plastic reminiscent of the original Play Station 1 controllers. The new controllers, currently dubbed the Triple Shocks, are slightly wider than the old Dual Shocks and Dual Shock 2s. The button arrangement is identical to the older models, but the left d-pad and analog stick positions have been switched in keeping with the current trend of XBox and GameCube controllers. The d-pad now has a raised plastic circle around it, facilitating the use of diagonals in games, and has been coated with textured rubber. The analog sticks were essentially the same as the previous installments, but have also been coated with the same textured rubber, allowing for greater control and comfort. The shoulder, start, and select buttons have all come through with basically no change whatsoever, and the analog button has been changed to a small vertical switch. The rumble feature was not demonstrated, but Sony promised that it would be stronger and more precisely controlled. The biggest change, though, is that there is now a small slot at the back of the controller. This slot supports Sony's Memory Stick media cards, which come in various sizes up to and exceeding 128 MB. This is for save transfer between different consoles only, as normal saving will be handled internally by the PS3. The controller ports have also been changed, made smaller and circular, in order to make room for four controller ports on the machine's front. It was a little disappointing that Sony has not made the switch to wireless controllers, the success of which Nintendo's WaveBird controller has demonstrated. The changed controller ports have not affected backwards compatibility, however, a main draw for Sony's consoles. More on that later.

The main meat of the new console, of course, is its internal workings. And the PS3 does not disappoint. The console comes equipped with a 50 GB HDD utilizing fiber-optic transfer for maximum speed. 512 MB of total system memory was staggering, and Sony revealed that on the extremely rare chance that that is not enough for developers, a portion of the HDD has been modified to act as scratch RAM. This gives new, unparalleled freedom to developers everywhere. The heart of the machine is the new Cell CPU, jointly developed by Sony, IBM, and other high-profile electronics manufacturers. Sony would not reveal the clock-speed or other specifics regarding the chip, stating that the model in the demo PS3 was an unfinished version and not truly representative of the power of the final console. Either way, the Cell is an immensely powerful beast, and Sony has dedicated it mainly to calculations. Actual graphics and sound are produced by two modified Emotion Engine/Graphics Synthesizer chips working in tandem, with a joint 128 MB of embedded VRAM between them [Ed. note: overkill].