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Technology

Playstation 2 Workstation 85

Posted by Hemos from the station-to-station dept.
xtra there's been a lot of talk about the power of the Playstation 2. Now it seems that Sony believes that the graphical power of the PSX2 is so great, that they are going to use it as the heart of "Creative Workstations", developing a line of computers for people working with graphical content, mainly. The day of covergence draws one step closer.
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Playstation 2 Workstation

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  • I actually don't think the port would be all that difficult, relativly speaking. AFAIK the "emotion engine" is running the MIPS instruction set which we already have a port for. So, a port would need, ideally: X, sound, Mesa, and any system specific stuff (booting, MMU etc.) USB and Firewire too of course, for full functionality.
  • In the early nineties, Sony produced a line of MIPS based graphics workstations that ran the proprietary, Unix-like NEWS-OS. These machines were called Network Workstations, and Sony provided an OpenGL for the accelerated 3D graphics hardware. (NWS-5000G series, I believe.) )

    Sony did not market these systems outside of Asia, so they were something of a dud. This also makes finding any information on it next to impossible if you don't speak japanese. I would never have heard about this platform if it weren't for the "Sony NEWSmips" page on the "Supported Platforms" area of the NetBSD site...and web searches have only turned up a smattering of information. If anyone out there can point me to some web resources?

    Now we know Sony has MiPS workstation and Unix experience, there is a gaping vacuum where SGI once was, and Unix is on the rise again.

    Foregone conclusion: SGI is -meat-.

    In doubt: is Sony going to revive the NEWS-OS, or are they going to be the first major workstation vendor to back Linux whole-hog?

    SoupIsGood Food
  • PSX2 speculators tend to overlook the fact that the PSX2 has Firewire *and* USB ports in addition to the two-on-the-front game controller i/o ports.

    I'm willing to bet that there will be cheap USB joysticks and controllers on the PC market in 6 months, which means that Sony *not* putting more proprietary ports on the front is a good thing.

    They'll put 'em on there, so that they can bundle cheap controllers in the box, but really I think that USB-based controllers will take over from there.

    And I'm willing to bet their Game API's can seamlessly switch between a USB controller and a cheap-front-i/o-port controller...

  • Uh.. I'd buy a playstation computer with no OS and sit down with a few mips manuals and code my own in assembly language for fun.
    I'm sure alot of all the unix type OSes would be ported to this computer in no time.. not to mention BEOS.. in my opinion, the software is the easy part that they should leave to the hackers whom like to sit around all day and write code religiously.
  • The digital entertainment developer market is different now. For one thing, it's quite a bit larger, and far more diverse. Now is also the ideal time for Sony to stick their foot in the door, with the trip-ups recently by SGI and Intergraph. As an artist at a game company, this really is something that piques my interest, as software has always had trouble keeping up with hardware, mostly due to developers simply not having solid hardware from the respective companies to work with before it gets shipped. So you see a new 3D accelerator come out with all these shiny new features, and don't see any products that take advantage of it for at least a few months, when lo and behold, the hardware developer announces their next big thing. I appreciate the progress, but it's a stagger-step way to do things. Sounds like Sony plans to improve on the model greatly by giving developers access to the new hardware in time to give them a chance to release products using concurrent technology. This, I look forward to.
  • >But Sony don't want to enter existing workstation markets, so they will not quite face the same
    >problem. They want to create new markets.

    No, they want to enter the Macintosh market. Most Macs in business settings are used for exactly the same sort of thing - graphics, layout, multimedia. Sony is rich enough to give it a go - the result should be more choices and better/cheaper Macs. Both are good things.

  • The Beast Rides Again. (Score:4)

    by SoupIsGood Food ( 1179 ) on Thursday October 07, 1999 @05:12AM (#1631884)
    Back when SGI was making systems everyone wanted, their microprocessor engineers had developed two next generation chip designs for the MiPS family. Code named "The Beast", the first design was to be every inch as fast as a top of the line Cray vector processor, at microprocessor prices.

    The second design would be a complete revamp of the MiPS architecture, and was code-named "Alien. It's proposed specs made the Beast look like a 286 with asthma.

    Then SGI bought Cray, who whined that their sales would plummet if their pricey, high-margin system looked like a chump next to commodity electronics. Then Beluzzo stepped into the scene, and abandoned MIPS altogether, spinning off the company and washing his hands of RISC. End of story.

    Until...

    Sony needed something special for the PSX-2. MIPS just happened to have this Beast and alien crap that SGI didn't want anymore, so...MiPS figured if they could make a workstation as powerful as a supercomputer, they could make a game console as powerful as a workstation.

    Sony has just awakened to the raw possibilities afforded by the MiPS platform, and Sony -never- misses an opportunity. They're big, they're fast, they're hungry, they're linux-friendly, and that sound you hear is the sound of SGI running for it's life.

    The beast is back.

    On another note, Atari and Amiga failed because they were run by total incompetents who couldn't balance their own checkbook, never mind run a multinational technology giant. The Amiga 1200 and Atari Falcon were the best selling models in either company's history, with more orders than they could ever hope to fill. Runaway Growth + Moronic Management = Death.

    SoupIsGood Food
  • adamhupp [slashdot.org] wrote
    I actually don't think the port would be all that difficult, relativly speaking. AFAIK the "emotion engine" is running the MIPS instruction set which we already have a port for.

    I think you might be underestimating the task a little here. Because it is backwards compatible with the exising Sony Playstations, it will use that CPU as the hub I/O chip and the EmotionEngine and GraphicsSynthesiser are independent but connected via fast memory pipes. So I suspect it would be more akin to programming a SMP with slightly different CPUs, not to mention slightly different bits of scratchpad RAM scattered gods-know where. I'd also like to see their memory hierarchy and timing models for their vector units as well, not to mention how the hell they're going to stream video simultaneously (probably one of those secret instructions they're not going to tell anyone). Thus Mesa would have to be threaded and tuned, X designed to synchronise with the I/O hub, and of course, the kernel has to boot off the DVD into a measy 32M. Perhaps someone who's got the dev kit with Cynus compilers can give us a clue as to what needs to be done?

    If you're so keen to get started, why don't you show us a bootable Linux for the existing PlayStation?

    LL

  • Somebody coming across a Playstation will probably be like somebody coming across an Atari 2600 today. Today we go "cool" and play the old favorites of Adventure, Superman, Space Invaders, Yars Revenge, Breakout, Warlords, etc. In 20 years it'll be "wow" and we'll play our old favorites of Spyro, Crash, Einhander, etc.

    Of course, there might be an issue as the transition to HDTV should be complete. NTSC will no longer be a standard and might not be supported by the TV sets of 2019 :-)

  • From what I've heard of the playstation 2, it doesn't sound like it would be that hard to network it to a Linux box and then have it run a GLX server... does this sound like an unreasonable way to get major graphics acceleration to your regular workstation? As for specialized graphics processing, perhaps there's a similar way to get a whole bunch of them to do clustering when networked to a server workstation... hmm rc5 ...
  • >Try to make a good animation without having it at it's real speed.

    I might be misunderstanding your point but has _any_ animation is not done in real time. Animators have and are trained to do it frame by frame. Disney & co did everything by hand. No real time there.

    >cutting developement by 3 or 4,

    Most of the development time is _not_ in computer/rendering but in the artist/work side.

    People make animation, not computers.
  • I haven't run a game on my system for a while now.

    Regarding the Playstation Workstation, well the name needs some polishing. I find it amusing everybody discounts the Nintendo console (and why is everybody so concerned about the software medium, the carts had advantages).

    On a slightly more relevant point, why is Sony wasting their time making a whole computer when they could make a card with a few of their graphics processors and have better results to show for themselves. I can't say I'm wowed by what I've seen of the PS2 in any case...

  • ...and then someone will code an emulator (which will run trivially on the computers of the day), and people will play vintage PlayStation games on their computers, downloading them from the Net.

    Bleem and PsEMU Pro already do this. Bleem claims that it only needs a p166.

    With any luck, downloading a 650Mb PSX disc image will be as much a matter as downloading a 40k C64 tape image is today

    People with cable modems, DSL, at schools, or any other place with decent bandwidth can already download a playstation game in 1 or 2 hours (less depend on where you are).

    As for the companies caring.. they still care. But maybe in a few years :).
    ...

  • look the review,a supercomputer allway cost a lot of dough,the only price i've seen in it is 19 000$ and the thing is supposed to have 1000 to 2000 computer production run per year,sony said they are not interrested in doing a profit on these box but still the low production run mean they won't have low price for a long while.
  • Imagining them trying to emulate this...

    Just when you think emulating something as "advanced" as N64 or PSX [emuhq.com] is difficult. I sometimes fail to see why buy them in the first place.. we have a N64 and PSX and I am playing them on my desktop!!



    Legalities aside..

  • Isn't this what happened with the Amiga. "Once a games machine, always a games machine" is what people thought, and although a few academics and scientists and the odd media company bought into the "Amiga as computer", business by and large treated it as 'games machine', despite its greater power.

    I think Sony have a tough task if they want to pull this off.

  • I noticed in the article that Sony plans to increase the power of the workstations by an order of magnitude every few years. Does this mean they're also going to require end users (read: PSX2 gamers) to upgrade their PSX's as well?

    I think that if it's relatively simple to do so (swapping out a CPU or increasing the amt of RAM), like a simple computer hardware upgrade (w/o mobo reinstall), they'll have a lock on the market. But if they expect people to keep in line with the Intel Syndrome (architecture / mobo changes every 9 - 16 months), I'd rather have a fully-powered PC than an almost-obsolete gaming box.

  • Maybe this is Sony's way of justifying the (expected) high price (compared to other consoles) of the PSX2.

    "It's not an expensive game console, it's an inexpensive graphics workstation."


  • [beowulf.org]
    http://www.beowulf.org/listarchives/beowulf/1999 /03/0027.html

    [eet.com]
    http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026

  • Since Linux has been so portable in the last years, I think they just need to port Linux to their platform and you get Yet Another Hardware Platform To Choose For Your Linux.

    Seems very easy to be true. What do you think?
  • That would make it a bit easier to put Linux on it. Does anybody have an opinion on whether these would be really useful for beowulf cluster graphics? Perhaps real-time visualization of simulation data or to replace SGI's reality X series for running immersive VR stuff like CAVEs or ImmersaDesks? The natural problem (and still SGI's advantage) is the Reality series' shared memory structure...
  • You know, I really hope this isn't just vaporware... The PS2 has been hyped a lot in the last few months, and to believe the game specs, the outside reviews and the screenshots, it's all worth it.

    But I keep my fingers crossed... I hope they do it right and don't get carried away with the power of the machine. Yes, it's next-generation, but even 50 years from now, we'll still be asking for game machines, so there's no need to transform it all into something it is not already.

    Still... Dang. I read a review by George Lucas, saying he received an early version of the PS2... Probably a machine sent to LucasArts or something. Anyway, he said there was a difference between the resolution produced by real-time imaging on the PS2 and the one used in TPM, but that you couldn't tell the difference on a television set.

    Speaking of TPM, let's hope the PS2 won't receive a hype backlash like TPM did. There is such a thing as over-hyping.

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • they are going to use it as the heart of "Creative Workstations"

    Are they fighting for the Apple customers?

  • Sony and Movie Theaters (Score:3)

    by bill fogarty ( 83316 ) on Thursday October 07, 1999 @03:27AM (#1631911)
    Sony didn't capture such a huge share of the home electronics market by not working hard. I find the last paragraph about movie theaters very intriguing indeed. I think they are right about that - movies theaters eventually will go to digital projectors, and Sony (if it continues the course) will have a lock on that market.
    Sony already sells a huge chunk of music and movies that are made. I'd say this ties very well to their overall strategy.
  • Maybe they could sell PCI graphics cards - but entire work stations - I don't think so.
  • Getting the OS would be relatively easy - as you've pointed out, Linux would be an obvious choice for a port.

    The hardest part would be supporting the graphics - whatever OS is chosen, graphics drivers would need to be written, debugged and tuned. They're touting the PSX2 as a superb graphics machine, so the graphics performance is what's going to count. The hardware would most likely be really nifty and complicated, and so getting optimum performance would be non-trivial.

    To put it another way, noone buys SGI machines for IRIX, they buy them because of the good graphics hardware and fully integrated and stable GL (and OpenGL) support in IRIX and it's X server.
  • They are. As of now, most PSX2 games are being developed on Linux, and I hear the PSX2 development box is Linux based. But as for the actual end-user box, who knows. The rumor is it's going to be Linux based, but that could be just to score geek interest above all the recent WinCE/video game "achievements".

    Source of rumor: a good friend owns a video game store, and is pretty in on the industry. Take that for what it's worth.

  • If I'm producing CG for tv or theaters or games I don't need to do it in real-time. So couldn't I do everything on a expensive PC? (Dual Processor/Oxygen graphics card/unholy amount of RAM/HD)

    Doesn't the current software apps, SoftImage/3D Studio Max, already have a lead in many graphics companies? (Many graphics people are trained to use them and they are a proven technology)

    Will SGI take this lying down?
  • Vaporware? Nah! I hear this thing is going to be "The Next Amiga!"

    (It's a joke!! It's a joke!!)

    -=-=-=-=-

  • Well Sony is a different company than Commadore was. Sony does have a proffesional market in Audio and Video. Would you by a Non-Linar Editing system from Sony? Of course you would. They could make a real go at a Audio Video Workstation. And BeOS would be a great match for it.
    P.S.
    I wrote an early Virus checker for the Amiga called TCell and I use Linux daily for our network. the right tool for the right job.
  • Actually, i really hope that they avoid the upgrade path. Personally, i have no problem with fiddling with the guts of my machine, but i know many, many people that are afraid to even *unscrew* the cover.. much less swap a cpu or add some memory.

    The appeal of a gaming system is it's simplicity. You plug in, put in, and turn on. That's it.

    Another issue is this: imagine you go to the store and see a really cool game the you just *HAVE* to have. Then you read on the box: "Must have blah blah blah requirements. Please fork over much mula to play our dumb game."

    Please don't tell me that you would buy into this upgrade upgrade upgrade mantra.

    I would rather buy a new system every 3-4 years then for over 60-120 bucks every 12-24 months just so i can keep up with the latest developement in games.

    --
  • True the Amiga was a games machine with delusions of grandeur, but it managed to be highly competitive in the video market. On the other hand Sony are a huge company which is well managed (Amiga was never well managed). As someone who hates PC based technology with a passion (X86 blows), I am more than willing to look at the fringe systems which may never even become available. Now I'm looking at the Sun MJAC chip and wondering when a workstation powered by it will come out, when I spot that Sony are making a workstation. Of course I'm immediately interested, anyone who detests X86 should be interested. I couldn't care less about compatibilty with PC (though no doubt it will be) As for the guy who thinks that PC technology will have caught up in mid 2000 with the specs of the PS2 HAHAHAHAHA Don't make me laugh Intel are very good at making x86 (but all they do is increase clock speed and occasionally issue more than one instruction) AMD are good at copying Intel A new system is long overdue, and this could be it. I have more faith in Vapourware produced by Sony running a flavour of UNIX, than in X86 powered junk running anything (windows or whatever) Just one thought PS runs Unix variant ever seen one crash, ever???
  • Existing Amiga 'classic' users are still waiting
    for something new which outruns current PC
    architecture.. maybe this is it then? There are
    people out there who want to pay money for a machine that is just KeWlEr than a PC.
    One thing they'll need to do (or allow done) is
    to have amateurs create games and demos which really show the power of the machine. Give out
    the specs, the hardware addresses, etc.

    It's about time we got rid of the old PC architecture. Will it do USB? Firewire?

    Let's just see...
  • If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.

    USB harddrives are around, just not bootable... Firewire on the other hand....
    Perhaps once USB becomes a bootable medium these things will be more viable.

    Kintanon
  • Put a keyboard on the PS2, a super drive, and BeOS and you could have the next c-64. Get the price to $200 without and bougus AOL discounts and you have something we haven't seen for a long time. A real home computer.
  • And Sony is big enough to have wall-mark, K-mark WIZ done the upgrade for the Joe Sixpacks, so there really isn't a problem.


    CY
  • Sounds like Sony wants to eliminate the PC with cheaper systems based on Playstation technology?

    I think we have seen stuff like this happen with the Oracle/Netscape/Sun's Network Computer and Intel/Microsoft's NetPC and Microsoft's Windows CE and Gateway/Amiga's New Amiga.

    What have we learned from these failures? :)
  • As far as I'm concerned, as a gamer, I'm definitely going to get one. As a gamer, you HAVE to. It's like a requirement. (Real gamers always have the latest stations...) Anyway, there are some problems so far that I can see with Sony's strategy as far as PS2 is concerned. Listen, and listen well, grasshopper...
    1. No direct Internet/networked game support
      Now, before I get flamed for this one, consider this. The Dreamcast has a built-in 56K modem, out of the box. And (since I have one, and know) it is easily pulled out and has an interesting port that it plugs into... proprietary, but it is claimed by Sega bigwigs that they'll be offering a DSL or cable (or both) modem upgrade in the future for Dreamcast owners, and it makes sense. Games for the DC are going to need slightly more bandwidth than the regular 56K they can get (and usually less) through a regular phone line. But they have it integrated. Sony's plans call for PS2 owners to have to go out and buy one later on, but theirs will be an Ethernet type card; not only will owners be forced to purchase the card, but also they will need to get an ISP that supports such a device. If Sony expects to succeed, they need to either A)Offer a competitive priced service for their Internet gaming over Sega's or B) Offer a regular modem for those of us who don't feel like going Ethernet just yet.
    2. Only two ports on the console
      This might not seem like much of a problem, but I think that Sega's got the right idea. Multiplayer is where things are going, because the computer (while being interesting) never really DOES provide the same challenge (or satisfaction) of beating a friend who you know, or playing in a tournament against other players who are really good too. Example: Armored Core. There is already heavy development on AC2 for the PS2 (and it's pretty much the sole reason I'm getting one) but the computer is going to be second-rate compared to a true AC champ. Besides, how cool would it be to play a four-way AC deathmatch? I drool at the prospect, but with only two ports on the front (a near-fatal decision, IMHO) it won't happen. And the system is DEFINITELY able to handle the workload, so the idea that it's too much of a strain is BS.

    I'll be getting a PS2, but I don't know how well it's going to work out. My budget is limited to about $400 for the total system, and it is expected to be released soon (March, IIRC) in Japan for about $375. If I also have to buy a NIC for it, which will probably be a bit of a cost as well, and pay for a service (which I don't even know if I can get yet) I don't know how well this system is going to go... so far, Sega's done everything right. Let's hope that Sony doesn't make mistakes. Competition is good.
    (PLUG: Check out my Armored Core web site! With pics I *borrowed* from From's website... go here [tripod.com].)
  • to say about this. Sony has got very very good technology. Their know-how in consumer electronics and media production is phenomenal. However, the content and media tools field is creativity and software driven with many firms holding content franchises and/or proprietary visual special effects close to their chest. Despite the inroads of the NT juggernaut, SGI does still hold some sway in the media industry with Apple probably filling the lower niche. Also developing efficient code and compilers for multiprocessors is not trivial. How many programs are currently optimised to use Apple's Velocity or the Intel/AMD SIMD extensions? The silicon hardware is willing but the carbon wetware (ie brain-power) is weak. I'm not saying that a revolution of the media industries can't be done, the Japanese are brilliant engineers but the competition for skilled developers and creative storyline writers (the so-called Gold Collar workers) is going to hurt. Also the content is going to be revved up if you don't want 3D reruns of old scripts. I suppose a holoplex where instead of a sit-down film, you have Indianna Jones experience for hormone driven teenagers can't be too far off.

    An interesting world, I wonder what Shakespear would have done in today's time.

    LL
  • But Sony don't want to enter existing workstation markets, so they will not quite face the same problem. They want to create new markets.
  • This article quotes sony as saying that the PSX2 will use PC Card slots for expansion, and USB ports as well: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026 [eet.com]. This is news to me! I thought I'd kept up on the PSX2 pretty well, but I think we have a viable thin-client computer here. If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.

    This is a great deal: $400 for a game console, and a thin-client (or server) for the internet.
  • I doubt that Sony will be looking to make PS2 owners upgrade all the time. The article said that the workstations will be based on PS2 tech, and that the workstations will be an order of magnitude faster for each gen. The Emotion Engine 2 is for the second gen Creative Workstation. The EE3 is for the third gen Creative Workstation *and* for the PS3.

    So, no, your PS2 will not have to be replaced until ~2005 or so. Your Creative Workstation will, if you want to keep the thing current, have to be upgraded.

  • Creative Uses for your old Playstation (Score:4)

    by meersan ( 26609 ) on Thursday October 07, 1999 @04:00AM (#1631934) Homepage

    Creative Uses for your old Playstation

    If they were computers, you could reformat and install Linux when you got your next upgrade. So what do you do with your old Playstation, after you've gone out and plunked down the $$$ for a new game system?

    • Place the Playstation in your front hallway as a decorative doorjamb.
    • Nestle the Playstation on any shelf as a useful bookend. Grab one from a friend for a coordinating pair.
    • The Playstation's shape and size make it an appealing paperweight.
    • Loop a high torsion line and a cement brick to the Playstation for an inexpensive anchor.
    • Inflate your geek creds! The Playstation's distinctive cover makes a technologically-oriented conversation piece and desk toy.
    • Tuck your Playstation into a closet or attic; its almost-magical dust collecting properties mean your clothes will stay fresh and new for weeks.
    • True collectors will position the Playstation on on a coffee table as memorabilia.
    • Garage-sale item -- be sure to price yours competitively ($20/b.o).
    • Trouble reaching upper shelves? Vertically-challenged readers will keep their Playstation in the kitchen as a footstool.
    • Craft-oriented readers will remove the inner circuitry and use the Playstation's plastic case as a storage box.
  • Expansion is via PCMCIA slot, a couple of USB ports and Firewire. Sony have allegedly got a large hard drive addon in the works as well, so there's certainly no reason it couldn't run quite happily as a thin client (or even a fairly thick one :).

    One question that springs to mind is whether the TOOL box (developer kit based on the PS2 hardware) contains an extra processor or whether it uses the PS2's EE for running Linux. If the latter, then there really shouldn't be any problem converting the PS2 to a relatively nice Linux box (though the integer performance is fairly horrible).
  • "If PCs with a 400-MHz Celeron processor and several gigabytes of hard-disk storage satisfy most PC users, product differentiation loses meaning and only price talks, he said. Some PCs have broke $1,000 and dropped to $500 or less, and some are offered for free. " well seeing someone is giving away free pc's let us all build beowolfs..... what the funk is this guy on about? sounds like marketing hype at its best..... everyone email sony for the location of these "free" pc's........


    The jokes on you this time.>:) My Free (Completely, 100 percent free for 0 cash) PC will be arriving at my house in approximately 3 days. The conditions are as follows:
    1. You must spend 10 hours per month online with the PC, 1 of which must be spent using the FREE dialup ISP provided with the system.

    2. You can not fubar the system or remove the stuff it comes with.

    3. 15% of the screen realestate is taken up by AD BANNERS which you look at when you use the system.

    4. After 3 years you get to keep the PC, free and clear. If you want it before then you can purchase it for Original cost-(NumMonthsOwned*20)


    I intend on hooking mine to my cable modem and using it to run Alladvantage, GotoWorld, all of that sort of thing using my Girlfriends accounts, signed up under me.>:) 1 hour per month using their dialup ISP, no problem...>:) the system is even fairly decent, 400mhz celeron, 56k modem, 4 gig HD (Actually 6 but I think 2 are taken up by their ad crap) ethernet as well I believe, though if not I have a spare in my desk y'know. The website is www.free-pc.com It took about 2 months for us to go from the point of signing up to actually getting the PC.

    Kintanon
  • You obviously did not bother to read the article. These workstations are NOT meant for game players, they are meant for game developers and other markets such as servers for dealing with digital movies for theaters that decide to start going digital.
    ---

  • NTSC to HDTV converters are going to be in such demand that hopefully Radio Shack will be selling them for $20 for a long time to come. (After all, they still sell 8 Track stuff!)

    Well at least I hope so. There's an enormous investment out there in NTSC beyond Ataris and Playstations, even if it's not being broadcast.
  • ...and then someone will code an emulator (which will run trivially on the computers of the day), and people will play vintage PlayStation games on their computers, downloading them from the Net.

    (With any luck, downloading a 650Mb PSX disc image will be as much a matter as downloading a 40k C64 tape image is today, and the copyright owners will care as much as the owners of Wizball and Paradroid care about you pirating their decade-old war3z.)
  • I would actually argue that retrofitting a game machine into a computer did work for the Amiga, as it did for Atari with both the Atari 800 and ST lines.

    These systems eventually died, but that was due a bad business model more than anything. (Sell at a thin margin, invest no money in R+D.) Sony can afford to subsidize these things with both game/software sales, and the 'pro' video-editing applications.

    Sure, few "academics and scientists" took the Amiga seriously. It wasn't marketed at them - it was marketed to gamers and video people, who did take it very seriously. On the other hand, Windows PCs were designed as machines to run Lotus 1-2-3 and MS Word, yet they are constantly being kludged with things like DirectX and Windows 98 to use the great gaming hardware available.
  • I think it would be one of the few potential buyers that would treat SGI with the respect it deserves... Hell, they may even bring back the old logo.
  • No direct Internet/networked game support

    Ethernet is the better idea, since it's a lot more flexible... I'd rather have a modem hanging off an ethernet connection than a built-in modem and no ethernet.

    Only two ports on the console

    Only two ports built in... You can add a virtually unlimited number of ports via USB.
  • The Register [theregister.co.uk] agrees with you as well in this article [http] posted today. Seems plausible given that a lot of their dev tools have been developed on Linux (SN systems, MATHEngine and Rebel Software who are supplying the IDE, physics engine and sound tools respectively all use Linux)
  • The article made it sound like they are targeting a much higher-end market than the Mac. Their aiming to compete againt Graphics Workstations, not Graphics PCs. Eventually targetting TV stations and Movie Theaters for real-time streaming and rendering. Sounds like they're targeting a new market which hasn't really emerged yet, but is going to over the next 3-5? years. Of course given the track record of the industry for high-end tech to migrate to the low end, if they are succesful it won't be long (in human years, not cyber years) before we see the tech on the consumer end.
  • I don't know about other people, but I think that you can only get "true" power when it comes to things like grapics design when you have a proprietary hardware specifically designed to do one thing. The manufacturers don't have to worry about making anything compatible with anything other than itself. This means they can develop software specifically for the hardware, and they don't have limitations like trying to code a 128-bit port of windows (or linux, or MACOS, or *BSD, or IRIX, or Solaris, AMIGAOS, *, *, ...). You get more power with proprietary things. It is also easier on the companies pockets to opensource to software becuase they will make all the money off of the hardware.

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