Sony is preparing right now. It’s preparing because this really is a crucial year for the company. It’s next-generation gaming console, the fabled PlayStation 3 is coming out, at some point this year, and only then the company will see whether all the bets it made regarding its product will pay off.

And one of those bets is that Sony expects to ship over 100 million PlayStation 3 (PS3) game consoles globally this year, according to Tetsuhiko Yasuda, Sony Computer Entertainment Asia’s corporate executive managing director and senior vice president of Asia, cited by Carrie Yu for DigiTimes.com.

Sony has not finalized the specific time frame for the PS3 launch, as well as pricing, he said. The company aims to launch the PS3 at the same time throughout Asia. However, not all the regions in the global market will see the same launch day, as the Internet infrastructures differ in each individual market, Yasuda said.

Sony has shipped over 100 million PS1game consoles and similar amount of the PS2 game console, with Taiwan and Hong Kong accounting for 10% of its PS2 sales in Asia, Yasuda indicated.

Also, Sony may consign the manufacture of PlayStation3 game consoles to Taiwan companies, as it has for the PS2 and PSP, the Commercial Times reported, citing an SCE official. It wouldn’t be the first time the company chooses this solution, because SCE usually makes new game consoles at home in the early stages of production before it gradually consigns the manufacture to overseas firms.

However, the most important announcement was that Sony does not regard Xbox as a competitor. Rather, the company may even consider working with Microsoft to develop games together, Yasuda noted.

Well, as for this statement, I do believe that it’s rather, well, unrealistic. Sony and Microsoft are direct competitors in more than one field. And why develop games that could run on both next-gen consoles (presuming that this is what Yasuda was talking about) when the fact that their games are not compatible is one of the most important things in their marketing strategies? 

After months of speculation it appears that Sony’s Playstation 3’s hard drive will be sold seperately. Many people assumed that the HDD would be an extra add-on, but this is the first time that proof has appeared on an official Playstation web site. The products list on the global Playstation site clearly shows the HDD as a seperate product.

SCE Japaneses president Ken Kutaragi hinted some time ago that we could expect an 80 gigabyte size for the PS3 hard disk, double the size of the Xbox 360 HDD.

Famitsu, the Japanese website, well known for having close links with Sony, speculated back in January that ‘The system will ship with a 2.5-inch hard drive slot, with a HDD sold separately.’ It’s also been suggested that an operating system, such as Linux, will be included.

So, currently it seems as though Sony will not be offering bundles, like Microsoft did with the 360, the PS3 hard drive will be a costly extra. No prices have been confirmed by Sony, nor has the news of the HDD been made official.

That’s what sources are telling Next-Gen anyway. According to the sources the PlayStation HUB system is being developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and will feature downloadable content such as demos, independent games and online play.

The PS3 hardware would be released in North America and Japan in mid-September, though there’s no word on Europe. Obviously Sony has refused to comment, but it’s thought that PlayStation HUB may be announced in the next few weeks.

Source: Next-Gen

It popped up (and was quickly taken down) on SCEJ’s PlayStation 3 page a few weeks ago, and now Hot Shots Golf 5, known as Minna no Golf 5, has been confirmed to be in development for the PlayStation 3.

A banner on the homepage for the game’s developer, Clap Hanz, simply states that “Minna no Golf 5 is in development for the PS3.” No further details are given, but it’s just another sign that despite Sony’s silence, the system’s release is getting closer and closer.

If you want to see the site for yourself, you can do so by clicking here. If you don’t speak Japanese you’re not going to get much out of it, but who are we to stop you?

Gaming website Kikizo has just published what it calls “the first public PlayStation 3 hands-on report”, after speaking anonymously to three separate developers working on software for Sony’s next-gen machine. Sadly, the site was prevented from naming which three games it was shown, with all three developers keen to maintain anonymity. However, there were a number of interesting odds and ends to come from Kikizo’s hands-on time.

Firstly, it emerged that the casing for the PlayStation 3 is likely to undergo some modifications, with one senior developer Kikizo spoke to admitting that, “I think to fit everything that Sony wants in there and leave space for a 2.5 inch hard drive the machine would have to grow. The models they’re showing off are way too small for what they want.”

Inside the casing (for now, the PS3 innards are encased in a hefty tower set-up), Kikizo confirms that the hardware “is not completely final, but pretty damn close”, and also notes that all the developers they spoke to are designing their games in accordance with the DualShock 2 controls, rather than those offered by the boomerang-style PS3 controller unveiled by Sony at E3 last May. According to the piece, the men in the know expect Sony to change the concept design for the controller, but retain the familiar DualShock 2 layout.

On the subject of performance, Kikizo claims that the software it saw demonstrated doesn’t quite reach the visual quality of pre-rendered special effects in movies that was promised by Sony, though does admit that “it’s not an ugly picture by any means.” Which is, er, a relief. The site then goes on to describe the PS3’s RSX graphics chip as “twice as powerful” as Nvidia’s Geforce 6800 Ultra, and says some stuff about “multi-way shader pipelines” that we don’t really understand. It’s also revealed by the article that “many (if not most) games are running in 720p - not the ambitious, bleeding edge 1080p “Full HD” standard that Sony had us so excited about.”

And how does it compare to Xbox 360 according to Kikizo’s sources? “It’s certainly obvious this machine is not “twice” as powerful as X360, let alone a generational leap ahead,” says the site itself, though one developer involved in the piece does offer the view that the performance gap between the two could stretch: “Realistically, as libraries and experience with both machines grow, I think the PS3 will start showing things the 360 will choke at. But Sony will have to make available to us libraries and new routines for that to happen - something they’ve been severely lacking at so far.”

It’s all fairly intriguing stuff, and you can read the article in it’s entirety here.

Sony is poised to give the PlayStation 3 another public outing - at the Taipei Game Show, which is scheduled to take place between February 16 and 20.

According to the Chinese-language Commercial Times, “Sony’s exhibit will occupy a total of 80 booths at the TGS show, including 20 booths allocated exclusively for the PS3.” Considering that, at the PS3’s TGS outing last September, Sony devoted the vast majority of its floor-space to the PSP and PS2, it seems the company finally prepared to ditch its coyness concerning the next-gen console.

Whether visitors to the Taiwanese show will be the first to get hands-on time with the PS3 - rather than the rolling demos that have been shown up until now - is unknown, however. Sony is currently trotting out the official line that it won’t make any comments about the console until E3 in May.

However, with Microsoft due to launch its Xbox 360 in Taiwan on March 16, the Taipei Game Show provides Sony with an ideally-timed opportunity for a cheeky spoiler.

IBM on Wednesday announced that it would be using the processors it co-developed for the Sony PlayStation 3 in an upcoming server product aimed at those who require graphic-intensive and numeric applications.

“Today’s announcement puts Cell into an IBM product for the first time, taking it outside of the gaming realm — and indeed, the Cell solution announced today is the same chip used in PS3,” IBM spokesperson Charles Zinkowski told BetaNews.

The processor was co-developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba, and is based on the company’s Power processor architecture. It is optimized to work well in computer-intensive and broadband media applications, which the computer manufacturer says makes it well suited for server applications.

The new system is intended to keep IBM’s BladeCenter products in the top spot in the blade server market. The company holds 42 percent of the market, according to IDC surveys.

IBM said the servers could be used to quicken the process of 3D rendering, compression, and encryption, allowing companies to create and run graphically rich applications in real-time.

“Effectively delivering ’supercomputer-like performance’ by incorporating advanced multi-processing technologies used in IBM’s sophisticated servers, Cell BE is especially suitable for high performance workloads across a number of industries including digital media, medical imaging, aerospace, defense and communications,” the company said in a statement.

The servers will require Red Hat Fedora with the addition of several IBM-designed patches in order to run. Also, there are no applications currently designed to work on the platform, however the company expects that to change as it signs more software developers on to the project.

The first severs based on the cell processor technology are expected to make their debut in the third quarter of 2006, however IBM said it would make them available immediately via special bids.