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Azcentral: (…) The much-awaited video game console comes out Nov. 17 in the U.S., although getting one will be as challenging as finding parking at the mall after Thanksgiving. Thousands of lucky gamers tested the PS3 over the weekend at the 2007 Sony Expo in Honolulu, two weeks before the debut.

Almost all were males — from boys with braces and baggy jeans to gray-haired baby boomers. (…)

“The graphics are crazy, way better than the second one,” said Doug Morrison, a 20-year-old University of Hawaii student. “It’s more realistic. It’s smoother. It doesn’t have any glitches. “I’m going to get one no matter what.” (…)

With his back turned to Sony’s new $7,000 TV, Robert McDuffie and his buddies were glued to a much smaller screen, watching someone play the first-person shooting game “Resistance: Fall of Man.” The 25-year-old Army sergeant from Daytona Beach, Florida said he didn’t attend the expo to check out Sony’s new line of high-definition TVs, tiny digital cameras or ultrathin laptops. “I came for the PS3,” he said, anxiously waiting for a moment with the machine. After playing for a few minutes, McDuffie said he was impressed. “I’m just trying to figure out how to get one,” he said. “I didn’t pre-order, so I’m going to have to stand in line overnight.”

The PS3 is driven by a high-powered cell processor, making game play super smooth and graphics amazingly detailed. A gigabit ethernet for online gaming and a Blu-ray disc player comes standard on the console, as does a wireless controller. The PS3 can play games and movies at “1080p,” which is the highest definition resolution currently available. (…)

Tim Mah, 13, of Honolulu had one word for the new machine: “Wow.”
Dyron Mack, a 35-year-old computer analyst, said he plans to buy a PS3 without consulting his wife or disclosing the cost. “I’m not going to tell her. You just show up with it and let her be mad,” he said. “You just say, ‘I’m sorry. I lost the receipt.’” What do you think?

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T3: Flag this one up with a “dubious” sticker, but we’re hearing rumours that HD movies will soon be available for download from Xbox Live.

The internet’s abuzz with speculation that over 1,000 hours of Hi-Def loveliness will be available for download, potentially scuppering PlayStation 3’s HD party plans.
Add that to the console’s HD-DVD drive, constantly evolving software and Sony’s delay-ridden PS3, and Microsoft could be set to steal a march on delivering HD nirvana to movie fans.

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Next Generation: In an interview with Newsweek, God of War creator David Jaffe explains what he considers to be the philosophy behind Sony’s new e-Distribution service.

The ever quotable Jaffe, who is currently working on the upcoming PlayStation 3 downloadable game Criminal Crackdown, explained to Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal earlier this week why he thinks electronic distribution is so viable and why he’s having so much fun working in it.

Jaffe is quoted in the interview as saying: “’God of War, Twisted Metal, Resistance and Gran Turismo, those are like operas. These are like pop songs.” “…in the future, because I think these services are going to be really successful, I think it’s actually going to end up being more lucrative to write pop songs, just like in the real world, than operas.”

Throughout the interview, Jaffe compares Sony’s service to Xbox Live, explaining that while he does like Xbox Live, they distribute “Ashlee Simpson pop songs” and are an “oldies station,” compared to his goal of making games of similar quality to the pop songs of the Beatles. He also states that he would like to continue working in this space for as long as possible, saying of Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison “Phil is a really big believer in this service.”

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BBC: The PlayStation Network will let PS3 owners play other gamers, chat, download extras, store images, video, or music and browse the net. The network will be free to play or chat but users must pay to get downloadable games and other extras.

The navigation system for the PlayStation Network is based on that used on Sony’s handheld game gadget – the PSP. This navigation system has a “Friends” area in which users manage online game play. In this area they can see if friends are online and what games they want to play. It also includes a basic social networking system that lets people swap text-based messages.
As well as giving users access to online gaming and the net, this browsing system gives access to any images, music or movies stored on the device. This multimedia content can be taken from the net, bought from the Sony PlayStation store or loaded via memory sticks or USB.
Via the store PS3 owners will be able to buy downloadable games, extras for games, movies and music. Downloadable games are expected to cost about 12 euro.

The PS3 is due to launch on 11 November in Japan, 17 November in North America and March 2007 in Europe.

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GamesIndustryBiz: Launch titles for the PlayStation 3 are already “getting up close” to the 25GB limit on current Blu-Ray discs, according to Sony’s worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison.

“Already, we’re getting up close to the 25GB limit that we have on our Blu-Ray discs this year,” he claimed. “Next year we’ll raise that to 50GB, and I’d expect that we’ll be getting close to that in the fairly near future as well.”

Harrison decried suggestions that the Blu-Ray drive had been included in the machine purely to push Sony’s agenda with regard to Blu-Ray movies.

“It’s got nothing to do with movies,” he responded. “DVD is not sufficient capacity to power the kind of data consumption, or to feed the data consumption needs of Cell and RSX – just purely as a gameplay device, we need Blu-Ray to supply the kind of data that PS3 games use.”

Harrison also responded to questioning about the claim that the capacity of Blu-Ray will be used simply to provide more high definition movie sequences, effectively filling the discs – and games – with non-interactive content.

“It’s not just about graphics,” he said. “It’s about 7.1 audio, it’s about speech, it’s about having up to 1080p movies built into the game; it’s high res textures, it’s animation, it’s everything that goes into making a very rich and varied next-gen experience. Partly it’s visual, partly it’s sound, and partially it’ll be down to gameplay benefits as well – more levels, more detail, richer experiences.”

However, he also defended the right of developers to include rendered video in their – a key feature of many titles, even on next-generation systems.

“I see nothing wrong with having non-interactive, full HD sequences as part of the game,” he said. “That’s all part of the production value and the experience that you get when you buy the game. I don’t see that as a weakness at all.”

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NewLaunches.com: The Playstation 3 is just a month away from its US launch and Sony has started generating the buzz by airing the first North American commercial “The Wait“.

See it here.

Will they also air “The Wait” commercial in Europe? Commerce immitates life? Perhaps not. According to a source at Sony, news of further European delays is “totally untrue”.

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Bloomberg: Sony and Pioneer, two of Japan’s biggest consumer electronics companies, were downgraded by Goldman Sachs Group on concern that their earnings may be less than previously expected.

According to Goldman’s Tokyo-based analyst Yuji Fujimori, Sony was downgraded as as a delay in PlayStation 3 shipments may reduce profit at its electronics business.

Pioneer was downgraded to “sell” from “neutral” because, according to the report, it faces “prospects of depressed earnings in the core car electronics business”. Competition in the overseas market for car navigation equipment is intensifying as “portable navigation equipment gains momentum” Fujimori wrote.

Shares of Sony posted the biggest decline in six weeks, while Pioneer, Japan’s third-largest maker of plasma televisions, had the biggest drop in almost two months.

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Next-Gen: Speaking to Next-Gen’s European media partner MCV at Sony’s Tokyo headquarters, Ken Kutaragi (Sony Computer Entertainment president) commented on the possibility of Xbox 360 and Wii overcoming the PS3: “We don’t care,” he said.

His remark isn’t a sign of forfeit to Sony’s videogame competitors, rather a sign of his confidence that PS3 production will eventually get up to speed and go head-to-head with the Wii and Xbox 360. While it’s surely keeping a keen eye on competitors, Sony’s main focus at this point is on its own in-house issues.

“Right now, [Blu-ray production] is an issue, because we can’t manufacture enough blue laser diodes for our PlayStation3s. But we will resolve that,” Kutaragi said.

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Sony cutting its price for the PS3? We can do better, Microsoft must have thought.
AVZombie: Microsoft has used its XO6 event in Barcelona to announce that the HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 will retail in the UK for just 130 pounds (or 199 euros). It will ship with an HD version of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, as well as an Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote.
The retail price is way below what many pundits were predicting and will send shockwaves through the Blu-ray camp, which is still expecting the PS3 to be the main driver for HD packaged media sales.

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Gamesindustry: Sony’s Phil Harrison has insisted the decision to include Blu-ray functionality in the PlayStation 3 has not burdened the console with ‘unnecessary cost’ (…) and that it is essential to the development of next-gen software.

“There’s this sort of misunderstanding that the Blu-ray disc player for movies is somehow burdening the console with unnecessary cost,” said Harrison. “That is completely not true. We put our Blu-ray disc functionality in the console purely from a game design point of view.”

“Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent,” added Harrison.

The PlayStation 3 is due to launch in the US and Japan in November, with a European launch next March.

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You can’t please them all. Gamers worldwide were delighted to hear Sony would cut the PlayStation 3′s prizes. But analysts are sceptical.
“It’s ridiculous to decide to cut the price before they start selling the PlayStation 3,” said Yoku Ihara, head of equity research at Retela Crea Securities Co. in Tokyo. “They may cut the price again if sales don’t go well.”

Mind you: The price reduction is limited to the Japanese market.

(source: Next-gen)

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Yahoo: Sony said Friday it will lower the price of its much-anticipated PlayStation 3 video game console, heating up the competition in the next-generation gaming war against rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

The announcement comes just days after Microsoft Corp. announced that it would roll out an external high definition DVD player for its Xbox 360 in an effort to match the PlayStation 3 (…) with its own Blu-ray DVD technology. (…)

Sony will cut the price of its basic PlayStation 3 model in Japan to 47,600 yen (320 euro), from an originally planned 59,800 yen (402 euro). That puts the PlayStation 3 in the same range as the combined basic Xbox 360 and HD DVD player in Japan, where the duo will sell for 49,600 yen (334 euro).

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