OT: SONY PS/2 review
wired.com
note 1394 port, and the lack of a telephone modem / internet connection. Also note the lead time Sony is about a year ahead of MSFT and others.
In summary a broadband playback device with only a 1394 port to connect to the internet with from this OFDM forum member.
Sounds ripe for a new cool w-ofdm product... before next november.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
PlayStation 2 Is Serious Fun
by Dennis McCauley
2:00 a.m. Oct. 20, 2000 PDT
My SUV is full of stolen industrial secrets, and there's a cop on my tail, signaling for me to pull over, but I'm not stopping.
As I ascend the peak of a nearly vertical hill, he rams my bumper. My vehicle spins out of control and tumbles end-over-end down the mountainside.
Such is life in Rockstar Games' action-adventure Smuggler's Run, among the first wave of titles for the North American version of Sony's PlayStation 2.
The long-awaited successor to the highly successful original PlayStation will launch on Oct. 26 amidst great fanfare, a multi-layered ad campaign, and a severe
shortage of available units.
Despite a hefty $299 price tag, the PS2 is a lock to sell out its initial allotment of units, which because of production problems has been limited to 500,000.
Should you happen to be one of the lucky buyers who totes home a PlayStation 2 on launch day, you'll be in possession of a cutting-edge game system.
The PS2 is fueled by a 128-bit central processor that Sony has dubbed The Emotion Engine. Developed in partnership with Toshiba, the CPU has a clock speed of 294 MHz, and sports 32 megabytes of RAM. The graphics processor holds an additional 4 megabytes of memory, and can display 75 million polygons per second at
resolutions up to 1280 x 1024.
All this firepower makes games on the PS2 appear noticeably richer with deeper colors and far more detail.
Race down a few hills in Electronic Arts' SSX and it's clear that this is a second-generation console. The snow board title shows off the PS2 at its best, with a fast,
smooth frame rate and gorgeous 3-D visuals. The frame rates tend to vary within games based on how many objects are on screen, but animations generally appear
smooth to the eye with almost no visible choppiness.
Impressive as it is, the PS2 is not without its warts. Disc load times, for example, are annoyingly long. More troubling, however, is a graphics glitch that occurs in some
PS2 titles such as Namco's Ridge Racer V.
During play, unsightly jagged edges can be seen in places where on-screen objects meet. Problems with the PS2's anti-aliasing capabilities, which smoothes out these
jaggies, have been reported since the Japanese launch in March, and remain quite evident in some of the first-generation game releases.
Sony officials dismiss concerns about anti-aliasing as mere growing pains while game programmers learn to cope with the intricacies of the PS2's processor.
"It's a learning curve that any system needs to go through," said Kazuo Hirai, Sony's president of North American operations. "Compared to the PlayStation, the PS2
is a lot more complex."
Unfortunately, the PS2 includes only one game controller, so you'll be playing solo unless you have one from the original PlayStation lying around.
Sony has taken the leap to add compatibility with some of the latest PC peripheral interfaces. PS2 is the first game console to come equipped with Universal Serial
Bus and Firewire (1394) support and Sony anticipates new storage devices will be out before long. Sony said that the two USB ports allow gamers to connect to some
keyboards and mice, but not all peripherals.
While the PS2 has no inherent storage capacity, 8-megabyte memory cards are available at $34.99 for saving games. Sony plans to offer an optional hard drive which
will fit into the system's 3.5-inch expansion bay.
Sony has signed on more than 300 publishers and developers to produce PS2 software, and 270 games are currently in production.
Twenty-six titles will be available at launch, including Eidos' TimeSplitters, EA Sports' Madden 2001, THQ's Summoner, and Midway's Ready 2 Rumble: Round 2.
An additional 24 games are scheduled to be released by year's end, and 63 additional games will follow in the first quarter of 2001.
"Though the first batch of games out of Japan for the PS2 didn't wow us graphically speaking, the first generation of PS2 games for the U.S. are looking very nice,"
said Joe Fielder, site director of ZDNet's GameSpot.
"Rockstar's racing game Midnight Club, for instance, looks better than the second generation of racing games on the Dreamcast."
Everybody who's anybody in the game-design business has climbed aboard the PS2 bandwagon. The same can't be said for Sega's Dreamcast, which has been
pointedly ignored by game industry giant Electronic Arts.
Speaking of the Dreamcast, Sega's year-old system is currently the PS2's only viable competition. New game consoles from Nintendo and Microsoft are on the horizon,
but won't appear until next fall in the North American market.
Although the PS2 has advanced processors, it lacks a modem. Sony said it will someday offer a broadband adapter that will connect the PS2 to the Internet via cable
or DSL modem. However, no release date has been specified, nor has Sony revealed an online strategy adding network play.
But the delay in getting the PS2's broadband adapter to market will allow Sony time to develop its online strategy. The company will likely develop a typical Internet
multiplayer gaming title as well as persistent online universes similar to the company's highly successful computer role-playing game Everquest.
Still, the PS2's production woes and the Dreamcast's cheaper price ($149) and head start in online gaming seem to offer Sega a window of opportunity. Sega's
Dreamcast comes with a built-in 56K modem and supports online play for selected game titles through SegaNet.
The PS2 can function as a DVD player, as well as being backwards-compatible with the existing library of 800-plus games created for the original PlayStation. While
managing the DVD function via the PS2's game controller is a bit awkward, an optional remote ($19.99) should simplify matters.
"DVD is not the driving factor in making the PS2 successful," said Russ Howard, vice president of brand marketing for specialty game retailer Babbages. "But it
certainly is nice that it plays games and movies and consolidates two machines into one."
Although plagued by component manufacturing problems, Sony has promised to deliver an additional 800,000 systems by the holidays.
Even those impressive numbers, however, won't slake gamers' pent-up demand for the PS2.
Several major retailers have already sold their entire allotments through pre-orders. Other stores are anticipating pre-dawn lines forming on launch day as thousands
of would-be buyers compete for the few remaining units.
"Supply will not meet demand," said Babbages' Howard, whose company has been taking PlayStation 2 pre-orders from eager gamers for nearly a year. "It's more of
a short-term issue than a long-term one. Sony is still saying that they are going to meet their numbers by March of 2001."
But whether or not the PS2's lack of Internet support and production problems will hurt sales remains to be seen. Unlike computer gamers, the console crowd is
inexperienced with online space as a multi-player arena.
Online connectivity -- or lack thereof -- seems to be the PS2's only competitive weak spot as the graphics and game selection and DVD compatibility make it the best
console around. And at this moment in history, Net connectivity is just not that big of a deal, since console gamers have only vaguely defined notions of online play.
Related Wired Links:
PlayStation Suit Stalled
Oct. 2, 2000
Sony's PS2 Pops the Question
Sep. 29, 2000
Sega Seeks Net Profits
Sep. 7, 2000
PlayStation 2: Worth the Wait?
Aug. 5, 2000
Sony Delays? 'Play' It Ain't So
Aug. 4, 2000
Claims Axed in PlayStation Suit
May. 17, 2000
Sony Emulator Plays on Sega
May. 12, 2000
MS: Come Out and Play
Mar. 10, 2000 |
