Important and bizarre E3 info

[Shifty Geezer]

Rather than wading through a gazillion posts, mostly people saying 'That's the greatest thing ever' or 'it's all smoke and mirrors', I thought a thread of interesting information (facts) would be useful to those of us who want know the realities from out of E3 without the conjecture, hype, and personal opinions. Things that I've noticed as important or wierd are...

XB360 confirmed as backwardly compatible - A very important decision, and it seems all three next-gen will support this gen, which is a first for gaming.

1:7 Cell configuration - No-one was expecting this!

7 controllers on PS3 - What happened to KK's magic beauty of powers of two? 7 SPUs. 7 Controllers. Maybe prime numbers are more beautiful?

Diverse memory card support on PS3 - I was expecting MemStick, but Compact Flash and SD were a bolt from the blue, and sets the tone for the machine as a multimedia hub that thankfully isn't tied to Sony's proprietary formats. This represents a huge shift in the company direction IMO

Please add other unexpected or welcome facts from E3 here and leave the debate to the official stickied topics.

 

[ndoogoo]

Cell 1:7 configuration.

SPU #8 space is probably where the DRM/anti-pirate section goes.

 

[nAo]

1:7 Cell configuration - No-one was expecting this!

Well, this not true, we speculated about a 6/7 SPEs configuration a lot of time..

 

[PC-Engine]

The CF and SD capability is nice, it shows SONY is slowly listening. OTOH wtf is up with 6 USB ports? Blue tooth was also unexpected. Does Blue Tooth have any power consumption advantages over other wireless technologies?

 

[rendezvous]

That depends on which other wireless technologis you compare it with.
But the fact that it could make it possible to use any (sensible) mobile phone connect to it for data transfer and perhaps even remote control it is nice.

 

[colinisation]

Bluetooth was designed for low power, short range (~ 20 meters) communication. Mobile phones and the like. About USB 1.1 bandwith I beleive.

 

[hey69]

i believe its less then that. around 1mbit. more then enough for controllers

 

[London Geezer]

The CF and SD capability is nice, it shows SONY is slowly listening.

Listening to who? Who was asking them to put all that in? It seems, instead of trying to cut costs on the PS3 (already having Bray, Cell, expensive RAM and all that), they put even more stuff in the box!
Gigabit LAN, wireless LAN, 2 HDMI ports, all those SD and CF slots, lots of USB2 ports, Bluetooth...

That thing is gonna be costly to produce for a long time.

And seen how it won't be release at a higher price than console usually are at launch, it's all added value for us. I'm very happy, although i probably won't use half of those features...

 

[PC-Engine]

Listening to complaints like how PSP doesnt' support SD, or how PSP better support MP3.

 

[London Geezer]

Listening to complaints like how PSP doesnt' support SD, or how PSP better support MP3.

Good for them then.