Sony Exec: Australia to have Sony Christmas despite PS3 delay

While the delay of the PLAYSTATION 3's launch in PAL regions have left many gamers disappointed, Sony's Michael Ephraim remains optimistic. During an interview with GameSpot, the Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and New Zealand managing director pointed out that although the console's launch has been pushed back, no retailers have canceled pre-orders.

[TheMART]

Well well. At least they launch somewhere!

Hey Sony, you just messed up. Gears of War is delayed 5 days after the USA launch, not 5 months! ;) They could adopt Ken in a wild life zoo park down under

[dbug360]

what i want to no is what ever happen to The first PS3s to roll off the production line will be PAL units???? ( http://www.computerandvideo... also how can retailers cancel pre-orders when i found it hard to find any that actually wore taking them in the 1st place here in Australia!

[tom1595]

i dunno if your australian or a kiwi, but in NZ EB games has been taking pre-orders for ps3's for like 6 months. seriously. i ordered one (then cancelled it when i decided i wanted a xbox360:D)

[The great 1]

It tells you something when the PS2 is gonna outsell the 360 after 6 years on the market, lol people want PS3, plain and simple!

[shortyNZ]

duh um cos parents are getting them for kids cos they are cheap az now, there are poor people out there that cant afford xbox 360, and they wont be getting ps3 either, i was gonna get my sister a ps2 for xmas but i decided not to cos i refuse to buy any sony product now

[DJ]

(and yes, I know how to spell it, psh) On another note, I just realized that the G80 (nVidia's latest GPU) is being released within days of the PS3 launch. Some dudes at PS3portal have been speculating that the full RSX specs will either be revealed very late or not at all due to the fact that it shares some very important aspects of this new GPU, the most important of which is 128-bit HDR rendering.

It's a small detail revealed at E3 05, and even the 7950, which is a beast, only does 64-bit HDR. ATI doesn't like to talk about HDR, but rest assured they don't have the technology (at the moment) since it was co-developed between nVidia and ILM. Yes, THE ILM.

Whether PS3 titles will use that level of HDR isn't clear, but at least the possibility is there. nVidia and Sony wanted movie-quality visuals so I'm sure they did everything possible to make that happen. We're pretty sure it's not a G80, but rather a custom hybrid of the best they have to offer. It would make more sense since the PS3's a closed environment and they would need to cater to the unique design of that environment.

[TheMART]

No the possibility isn't there. The PS3 was supposed to be put out spring 2006, so the hardware was already finalised in spec's at the end of 2005 max. Stop dreaming.

It's an Nvidia product which can't do 4 x AA and HDR at the same time. What the ATI 360 GPU can do on the fly with the 10 MB extra fast embedded ram on top of the 512 MB and the 48 unified pipelines.

The only point for Sony not telling RSX specs is because it'll loose on paper for sure and they're scared. Like Nintendo doesn't want to bring out Wii specs

[DJ]

But PS3 games are gaining visual superiority, and the old specs back up why. We've been seeing HDR and AA at the same time in PS3 titles like Heavenly Sword and Motorstorm, so I'm not sure why people keep saying the RSX can't do it. Maybe they're just angry with the PS3's visual superiority and feel the need to say something negative. As for the whole ED-ram/free AA propoganda, I see aliasing problems in 360 titles moreso than in PS3 titles; Gears of War and Lost Odyssey are the big offenders in that department.

"The PS3 was supposed to be put out spring 2006, so the hardware was already finalised in spec's at the end of 2005 max. Stop dreaming."

Developers didn't receive final hardware until E3 2006: Cell at 3.2Ghz, 512mb Ram, final RSX chip, FlexIO memory bus, sixaxis controller, etc. Something that you need to understand is that ATI and nVidia don't release the greatest possible technology all at once. Since it's more akin to a game of chess, they release slight one-ups to each others products. For example, the technology of the nVidia 7800 was done about a year before its release, but they need to make profits off of their previous tech AND keep their competitors in the dark. ATI does the same thing.

Found this out after reading a bunch of nVidia interviews and saw some RSX info. People questioned how a chip that was designed so long ago could still be revolutionary was explained by their business model. nVidia repeatedly states that the RSX will be the most powerful GPU on the market when the PS3 launches, which is days after nVidia's newest GPU card is launched.
----------------------------- ------------

It's important to realize that a GPU is only as good as the CPU that feeds it information, as well as the bandwidth of the CPU/GPU connection. Sony made the right decision by splitting up the memory pools and connecting Cell and RSX with a dedicated 35GB/s FlexIO bus. It was done out of necessity more than anything since the chips chew up and process so much data.

[Boink]

all of it is only as good as the software that's made for it.