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TOKYO - As part of its official PlayStation2 unveiling today in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment gave us a first look at two of its new peripherals for the new platform.
The first was a new controller for the PlayStation2 called the Dual Shock2 Analog Controller. The new pad makes use of analog technology on its buttons (save for Select and Start), which will allow for more precise control. We took the new controller for a test run with such titles as Tekken Tag Tournament and Street Fighter EX3 on the PlayStation2, and we found that there's not much of a difference in how its feels. Sony claims that the Dual Shock2 is backward compatible with the original Dual Shock controller, but it's currently unclear if this means it is backward compatible with the original PlayStation.
The Dual Shock2 will be available along with the PlayStation2 on March 4 at a price of 3,500 yen (about US).
The second peripheral Sony revealed was the new 8MB memory card. The new cards transfer data more than 250 times faster than current memory cards. With a possible future with network applications, Sony announced that the new memory card uses the MagicGate authentication and encryption security system.
Sony's new 8MB memory card will also be available with the PlayStation2 on March 4 for 3,500 yen.
TOKYO - Tecmo was showing an unplayable demo of its upcoming PS2 launch game, tentatively titled Unison. I wish I could tell you more about the game, but there wasn't any info on hand, and the demo only showed four Spice Girl-ish girls performing onstage at a concert. It looked pretty nice, and the animation and music were good, but something a bit more substantial would've been better. Or perhaps Tecmo could've shown some footage of Kunai, the working title of its upcoming PlayStation2 Ninja Gaiden game.
It's not just a rumor anymore. At a developers conference held Tuesday in Tokyo, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. unveiled its next-generation console, known widely as the PlayStation 2. A price and a name for the new machine were not announced at the conference. The system will be released in Japan this winter (before March, 2000), followed by a US release in fall, 2000.
Sony confirmed the use of DVD (and CD) as the storage medium of choice for the next system. It's likely that developers will begin producing games on CD, eventually making a seamless move to DVDs, as needed. Rumors of backward compatibility were confirmed by Ken Kutaragi and cheered by attendees. The system will not improve the graphics of the current breed of PlayStation games, but it will be 100 percent compatible with PS1's games. It will include a modem, but details of how fast that modem will be have not been finalized.
Amidst the system's specifications are Sony's Graphics Synthesizer and Emotion Engine. Capitalizing on the ability of the system to produce human-like emotions, Sony and its top developers showed off demos of exactly what the system can do. One demo showed the old-man character from screenshots of Final Fantasy The Movie changing his various emotions in real time. Another Emotion demo starred the starting-gate girl from Namco's Ridge Racer series.
Sony says that the Graphics Synthesizer in the next-generation PlayStation hardware will aid in the development of richly detailed game worlds via the machine's massive floating-point processing power. It also allows for an incredible amount of realism. For instance, Sony showed off a "puff-ball" demo, where wind affected each strand of each puff ball differently. It can also simulate real-world physical attributes - like gravity, friction, mass, water, wood, metal, and so on - like no other machine. Sony dubbed this "Emotion Synthesis" - making game characters and environments behave just as they would in the real world. According to the company, this reaches beyond the capacity of current state-of-the-art workstations and approaches the power seen in large-scale super computers used for scientific simulations.
Sony's press material released today sums it up nicely: "Imagine walking into the screen and experiencing a movie in real-time... this is the world we are about to enter."
Aside from the game side of things, Sony has built an MPEG2 decoder into the hardware to use as its image decompression technology. Not only will DVD increase the storage capacity developers have to use, but it could makes it possible to play DVD movies on the system - much like you can play music CDs on the PlayStation today. The use of digital technology will not only help graphics, it will help sound, as well - and Sony is going all out, providing processing of audio formats, such as Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS. Imagine playing a game with theater-quality surround sound. It's enough to pull you kicking and screaming into the game environment. In addition, Sony has thought about the future, adding support for Digital TV.
In the backwards-compatibility department, Sony has built in a new I/O Processor that uses the original PlayStation's 32-Bit core, allowing for 100 percent compatibility with the original system's games on the new machine. While no details were given, it's expected that you will be able to use data from the original PlayStation, including memory cards.
Development systems will begin making their way to developers this spring, with more announcements from Sony leading up to the machine's launch.
Star Wars Episode 2 on PlayStation 2
In a recent Japanese magazine interview with George Lucas, the creative genius behind Star Wars stated he really wants to see a game based on Star Wars Episode 2 made for Sony's PlayStation 2. Lucas mentioned that he feels the PS2 can successfully reproduce the CG visuals in the movie and that it may be possible to use the original CG movie data directly on the PlayStation 2.
Earlier this year we reported on Roger Ebert's (of the Chicago Sun Times) discussion with Lucas, in which Lucas continually praised the PlayStation 2 hardware. "The thing about the PlayStation 2 is that it works in real time," said Lucas. "We didn't make Phantom Menace in real time. Some of the shots in the film took 48 hours to render. We had huge, giant computers cranking every minute of the day. Here they're doing it in real time as you sit there."
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Q: How much will the PlayStation 2 cost?
A: Sony has not announced a price at this time. Early reports indicate that the price will likely be around 50,000 yen (about US). Our guess is that it won't be more than when it is released in Japan. After all, Sony is in the business of producing these machines for the mass market.
Q: Is the PlayStation 2 the official name?
A: No, not yet. Sony is referring to it as the "next generation PlayStation," but is not using "the PlayStation 2." We are using that name because it means less typing.
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