Games-designers experienced a double whammy at the E3 show in the US in May, with both Sony and Microsoft spilling the beans on their next-gen offerings. Microsoft revealed the Xbox 360, which is slated to launch in November 2005, while Sony took the wraps off the PlayStation 3, scheduled for a Spring 2006 launch. Analysts reckoned that Sony stole the show, with the PS3 tipped to be 35-times more powerful than the PlayStation 2.
At the heart of the PlayStation 3 is the Cell chip, developed for use by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. The chip is based on IBM’s Power PC architecture and will have seven cores, each running at 3.2GHz, to give the chip a total performance of 218GFlops. Running alongside the Cell will be a graphics processor developed by NVidia that is capable of handling full high-definition 1080p images and boasts performance of 1.8TFlops. Together, the two chips are about double the performance than that claimed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. The processors will be backed up by 256MB of XDR memory running at 3.2GHz and 256MB of GDDR3 graphics memory.
PlayStation 3 will include three ethernet ports, 802.11b/g wireless LAN and Bluetooth. In addition, there are six USB 2.0 interfaces and card slots for Memory Stick, Secure Digital, and Compact Flash (CF) memory cards. The console also includes a slot for a removable 2.5-inch hard-disk drive. For game-designers, the PlayStation 3 will likely be a massive improvement. In addition to the extra performance offered by the new chips, the PlayStation 3 will also be capable of high definition output up to 1,080 lines in progressive scan, which is the highest image quality of several signal types generally grouped as high-definition signals. Sony has said that developing for the PS3 will be more cost-effective at launch than it was to develop for the PS2 when it launched. The console will also double as a player for high-definition movies on Blu-ray Disc.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has intimated that the Xbox 360 could form the centerpiece of a digital, connected home. System specs bear out that contention. Powered by a custom-made IBM PowerPC-based three-core chip running at 3.2GHz, and supported by 512MB of GDDR3 RAM, the new Xbox offers 1TFlop of power. Graphics are powered by an ATI GPU running at 500 MHz, with 10MB of embedded DRAM.
The unit will ship with a 12x dual-layer DVDROM drive, three USB 2.0 ports, two memory unit slots, and support for four wireless game controllers. It supports progressive-scan DVD movies and a slew of DVD and CD formats, with output at 1080i. For networking, the Xbox 360 includes a built-in ethernet port and support for 802.11a, b, and g flavours of Wi-Fi. Microsoft also sought to woo games studios, with it pledging the Xbox 360 will be easier to develop for.
