Sony today pulled the curtain up at the Electronic Entertainment Expo to reveal its development plans and launch schedule for the company’s latest video game console, the Playstation 3.
Sony stated in a press release that the backwards compatible Playstation 3 will combine cutting edge technologies including Cell — a 3.2-GHz IBM-Sony-Toshiba jointly developed processor (seven cores to be specific) — RSX, a 550MHz graphics processor co-developed by NVIDIA and SCEI and 256MB of XDR memory developed by Rambus. It will also use Sony’s Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM), which has maximum storage capacity of 54GB (dual layer), to deliver entertainment content in full HD quality. The PS3 will support resolution of 1080p as standard.
The Playstation 3 will, according to Sony, offer a computer power of approximately two teraflops. This will, in conjunction with the aforementioned technologies, be enough to provide highly refined movements of characters and objects as well as providing real time rendering of landscapes and virtual worlds.
Sony said that Cell-based development tools were already being delivered to gaming companies; development of game titles, as well as tools and middleware, was under way as well.
Notable mentions of features from the specs in the press release include support for Dolby 5.1 and DTS, a slot for a 2.5†hard drive attachment, six USB 2.0 slots, slots for Memory Stick, Compact Flash and SD memory cards and built in support for Ethernet, wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth. The wireless Bluetooth option will provide support for up to seven controllers, while the Wi-Fi could enable connection with Sony’s recently released PSP.
The Playstation 3 will also offer ports for outputting HDMI, analog and digital audio signals. Supported disc formats, besides the BD-ROM, will include CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, DualDisc, DVD-ROM and DVD-RW, among others.
Sony added that the Playstation 3 and next generation games will be available in the spring of 2006 in white, silver and black colors.
“SCEI has continuously brought innovation to the world of computer entertainment, such as real-time 3D computer graphics on PlayStation and the world’s first 128 bit processor Emotion Engine (EE) for PlayStation 2,†said Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. “Empowered by the Cell processor with super computer like performance, a new age of PLAYSTATION 3 is about to begin. Together with content creators from all over the world, SCEI will accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment.”
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.