State of PS3 Production

Mythos

Regular
Some things have been out in the know already but some confirmation from Philly...

Harrison: "We are in full swing"
Thursday 3-Aug-2006 11:07 AM Sony head-honcho Phil Harrison details the on-going PS3 development train

Word recently reached us that the PlayStation 3 has officially entered production, and in an interview with The Guardian, Sony's president of worldwide studios, Phil Harrison has shed some light on the on-going development work on the console.

According to Harrison, "It's all going well. We are in full swing, from a developer point of view, and over 10,000 developer kits have been shipped. Developers now have final [PS3] hardware in their hands, though there will be some upgrades to the operating system - there's nothing unusual about that. The new controller is now in developers' hands, so all the pieces of the puzzle are there."

Also in the interview, Harrison comments on the arrival of working Blu-ray drives in the PS3 dev kits, noting that many studios also have blu-ray burners in their PCs, "so they are now doing their first iterations of games running off discs," he says.

"Signs are good," adds Harrison, "right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today, in the US. More than 100 games are in development [for the PS3], and all the major third party publishers have pledged their strategic support for the platform."

Sony is gearing up for its next big push for the PS3, which will start at the Tokyo Games Show on September 22, where the father of PlayStation, Ken Kutruagi is scheduled to give the keynote speech. Hopefully with the appearance or some new game titles and a more solid-looking launch line-up, Sony will be able to make up for the mostly-negative reaction to its showing at this year's E3. Stay tuned.

Source: CVG.com
 
Mythos said:
"right now there are more than 100 Blu-ray movies available today, in the US."
What's the state of these compared to HDDVD? The first BRD's were a big disappointment. Are we getting better quality encoding yet?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What's the state of these compared to HDDVD? The first BRD's were a big disappointment. Are we getting better quality encoding yet?

Man..the passion!

The state of BRD's are a whole different animal..but from what I've read it's getting better and most expectation is full swing for the format in the fall...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What's the state of these compared to HDDVD? The first BRD's were a big disappointment. Are we getting better quality encoding yet?

I doubt we'll see better encoding till Christmas. The MPEG-2 obsession continues for the moment. IIRC some studios (or Panasonic?) claimed H.264 for sometime in 2007.

The selection of movies is "gamer" oriented too so the titles are not of the highest taste at the moment, IMO.
 
I might be missing it entirely, but from what I can see Harrison does not touch on production in that comment at all. I'm amazed how many are reporting it as a comment on production just because one games website initially did - talk about a sheep mentality.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What's the state of these compared to HDDVD? The first BRD's were a big disappointment. Are we getting better quality encoding yet?
Apparently it's getting better, though recently some movies came on both formats and the consensus is that the HD DVD versions look better due to being encoded in VC1 (link). Once Blu Ray gets to dual layer, things should improve considerably.

Also, what's with Harrison saying that there are 100 titles available in the US? AFAIK, that is most definitely not true.
 
Titanio said:
I might be missing it entirely, but from what I can see Harrison does not touch on production in that comment at all. I'm amazed how many are reporting it as a comment on production just because one games website initially did - talk about a sheep mentality.
Agreed. He even fully qualifies it in his statement:

"We are in full swing, from a developer point of view"
 
Shifty Geezer said:
What's the state of these compared to HDDVD?

Well, it isn't really true -- there's less than 20 available currently, HD-DVD has quite a few more. Maybe he means 100 in the works at this point or by the end of the year or something?
 
Titanio said:
I might be missing it entirely, but from what I can see Harrison does not touch on production in that comment at all. I'm amazed how many are reporting it as a comment on production just because one games website initially did - talk about a sheep mentality.

Yeah...from a literal stand point.
 
For those wondering.

Blu-ray titles currently available...
50 First Dates (Sony)
Basic Instinct 2(Sony)
The Benchwarmers (Sony)
Crash (Lion's Gate)
Fifth Element (Sony)
Good Night and Good Luck (Warner)
Hitch (Sony)
House of Flying Daggers (Sony)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner)
Last Waltz (MGM)
Lord of War (Lion's Gate)
The Punisher (Lion's Gate)
Rumor Has It (Warner)
Saw (Lion's Gate)
Species (MGM)
Stealth (Sony)
Terminator (MGM)
Terminator 2 (Lion's Gate)
Training Day (Warner)
Ultraviolet (Sony)
Underworld: Evolution (Sony)
XXX (Sony)

HD DVD titles currently available...
16 Blocks (Warner)
Apollo 13 (Universal)
Assault on Precinct 13 (Universal)
ATL (Warner)
Blazing Saddles (Warner)
Bourne Supremacy (Universal)
Cinderella Man (Universal)
Chronicles of Riddick (Universal)
Constantine (Warner)
Doom (Universal)
The Dukes of Hazzard (Warner)
Enter the Dragon (Warner)
Fearless 2006 (Universal)
Firewall (Warner)
Four Brothers (Paramount)
Friday Night Lights (Universal)
The Fugitive (Warner)
Full Metal Jacket (Warner)
Goodfellas (Warner)
Happy Gilmore (Universal)
Jarhead (Universal)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warner)
Last Samurai (Warner)
Lethal Weapon (Warner)
The Manchurian Candidate (Paramount)
Million Dollar Baby (Warner)
Perfect Storm (Warner)
Phantom of the Opera (Warner)
Pitch Black (Universal)
Rumor Has It (Warner)
Rundown (Universal)
Sahara (Paramount)
Serenity (Universal)
Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (Paramount)
Sleepy Hollow (Paramount)
Swordfish (Warner)
Syriana (Warner)
Tomb Raider (Paramount)
Training Day (Warner)
U-571 (Universal)
Unforgiven (Warner)
Van Helsing (Universal)
We Were Soldiers (Paramount)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Training Day are the first titles to be released on both formats and here is a comparison for each one...

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/kisskissbangbang.html

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/trainingday.html
 
Titanio said:
I might be missing it entirely, but from what I can see Harrison does not touch on production in that comment at all. I'm amazed how many are reporting it as a comment on production just because one games website initially did - talk about a sheep mentality.
Yep. next-gen.biz report it accurately as development schedule. What was I saying in that earlier thread about modern journalism...:p
 
Anyone at siggraph see a 'real life' PS3?
I am really beginning to wonder when we will actually see a real, finished final spec box running on it's own.

Ati were showing off a final spec 360 to the public at siggraph last year. I remember, it was running a ruby demo and was caged up in a glass bubble. With no overheating issues either. :p

Considering the launch dates differ by a year and 2 weeks, I'm beginning to wonder...


[edit]

I also find it odd the average game would require 100 devkits.
Perhaps that includes obsolete ones too.
 
Graham said:
Anyone at siggraph see a 'real life' PS3?
I am really beginning to wonder when we will actually see a real, finished final spec box running on it's own.

They had working units at E3. I believe they had a couple of setups with Warhawk running off it, though it was running off the HDD instead of BR.


Graham said:
[edit]
I also find it odd the average game would require 100 devkits.
Perhaps that includes obsolete ones too.

10,000 devkits spread across 211 companies, on average that's 47 dev kits per company.
 
I think that does include older devkits. 47 PS3 SDKs per company, when many of the employees are working on content creation, doesn't make sense. Unless they're using Maya on PS3 Linux :p
 
They had working units at E3. I believe they had a couple of setups with Warhawk running off it, though it was running off the HDD instead of BR.
Were those were devkits? Or were they final branded and boxed systems? I'm more interested in the latter.

Where does the 211 companies statistic come from? and if 211 companies why not 200+ games? Seems a little odd.
 
In E3 2006, they had 1 retail PS3 unit for each "demo" room (I think 8 in total), showing Blu-ray playback, Cross Media Bar interface, Controller, The Eye of Judgement and em... I forgot the rest.
 
Graham said:
Were those were devkits? Or were they final branded and boxed systems? I'm more interested in the latter.

This is just the first pic of a working unit (not devkit) that i came across, there's a few floating around though.

146672713_74bba104bb.jpg

whboothwf6.jpg





Graham said:
Where does the 211 companies statistic come from? and if 211 companies why not 200+ games? Seems a little odd.

Oops, 208 companies, my bad.

He also offered the latest PS3 dev kit shipment figures, in an effort to exhibit Sony's commitment to developers. "To date we have shipped more than 10,000 development systems to 208 companies in 11 countries, the largest number ever for a PlayStation platform."

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3502&Itemid=2

There'd be alot more than 100 games in development. At TGS last year there were already 100+ games in deveopment for the japanese market alone iirc. Gamespot for eg. has 170 games listed.
 
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