PS3 Sorta-delayed, PSP Price slashed
Posted by inpheaux on March 15th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Early thismorning, as much of the rest of the world slept, Sony held a business conference in Japan to discuss what exactly is going on with the PS3. So, what is going on? Well, after months and months of delay speculation, it's finally been confirmed: the PS3 is officially delayed until November 2006. Luckily, the catch is that rather than a lengthy staggered release like the one for the PS2, which was released in Japan in spring and North America in fall, the different region releases are going to be much closer together. Sony doesn't have hard dates yet, but they claim they'll have units on sale in Japan, North America and Europe within the first few weeks of November.
In a way, for everyone apart from Japan [or anyone not planning on importing] it's like there isn't a delay. We were already being told Fall 2006, now it's just Fall 2006 for everyone. Though, this is what they're saying now, it is still fully conceivable that it could slip to 2007.
Reasons cited for the slip? Well, it's everything people have been speculating. Some components just aren't ready, like Blu-ray, which still hasn't made it to market yet. Final dev kits still haven't even been made yet, and aren't expected to go out untill May.
There's some good PS3 news in all this, though. For one, Ken Kutaragi confirmed that there will seriously totally be a 60 gb hard drive in every PS3. It isn't getting cut, and developers should totally expect for users to have a hard drive to store stuff on. He also confirmed that the PS3 will launch with a free online service like Xbox Live called the "Playstation Network Platform".
In other good news, Kutaragi made a point to drag out the PSP as a helpful distraction. The PSP will be getting a hefty price cut in all markets later this month, with a new MSRP of $199. There's also all kinds of new stuff coming to the PSP, like RSS support, video and voice over ip, and a browser update with Flash support [but only Flash 6 . . what?]. There's also new peripherals, like a USB GPS reciever [why!?] and a PSP version of the EyeToy [!?!]. Kutaragi also mentioned that they were working on an "E-Distribution" system that would allow you to download and play original PlayStation games via emulation. I'll believe that when I see it.
All in all, this conference was nothing shocking. We knew going in that there was no way Sony was ready to launch on the schedule they were clinging so dearly to. The PS3 is still quite a ways away, but for those of us not in Japan, the release date hasn't moved very far whatsoever. And anyways, it's not like games for the PS2 have dried up like they have for the Gamecube and Xbox. There's still FF12, Okami, Disgaea 2, [hopefully] another Katamari Damacy, Guitar Hero expansions, God of War 2, Kingdom Hearts 2, World of Mana, and a ton of other stuff on the horizon that I just can't name off the top of my head. At least these last few months leading up to the PS3 will be good ones.
Source: 1up
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