Archive for May, 2009

Sony officially said, “We currently don’t have any plans for a redesigned PS3.” This isn’t completely accurate. I’m sure that the teams involved with manufacturing the hardware definitely have continuous plans for improving the hardware, lowering production costs, and using newer and improved components from their suppliers. And I’m sure a major end-user visible smaller, lighter redesign is well planned. What Sony’s PR statement translates to is that they don’t have any plans that they are ready to discuss publically or any near-finished product that is going to ship in the immediate future.

First, a brief overview of hardware improvements (source):

In addition to the above, in 2008 Toshiba and Sony announced that they had Cell CPUs being manufactured with an even cheaper, cooler, and lower power 45nm and that would be in full mass production sometime in 2009. They didn’t mention a specific date, but new PS3 assembly will obviously switch to that once it’s available.

Secondly, have you seen a disassembled PS3? The blu-ray drives are big and heavy. Various vendors have been selling much lighter, thinner 9.5mm blu-ray drives for over a year now. I’m sure that technology is readily and cheaply available for PS3 use when they do decide to do a redesign.

Thirdly, they’ve dropped PS2 compatability hardware which I strongly dislike as an end user, but I’m sure that simplifies the hardware.

Bottom Line

There have major improvements to every part of the PS3 hardware since it first launched in 2006, yet they are still using the exact some external shell with the same size and form factor. The technology is available to do a major slimline redesign, the question is when will they do that?

I really can’t guess better than anyone else, but I think it’s a safe bet that we will see further internal improvements to new PS3 units later this year. At the least, we will likely see 45nm process technology in production this year.

The big surprise to me, is that I have been expecting a game like Red Dead Revolver which was cute and fun, but instead this is going to be a GTA transplant game like Bully.

If you aren’t familiar with Bully, they basically took the whole GTA game structure including the technology, the mission structure, exploration and side missions, and transplanted it from GTA’s urban crime setting to a schoolyard setting. For fans of GTA writing or gameplay, it was a great game.

With Red Dead Redemption they are taking GTA4 and transplanting it to a western setting, and adding a variety of improvements. BTW, the earlier title, Red Dead Revolver, was mostly developed outside of Rockstar who bought it late in development to complete and ship it.

IGN has a really in depth interview with Rockstar VP Dan Houser. To summarize some of the highlights:

• Roughly the same massive quantity of dialog as GTA4.
• Customized character AI to fit western setting.
• Compared with GTA4, this title will feature iterative improvements to various gameplay elements, narrative, technology, and multiplayer modes.
• They are aiming for a balance between historical accuracy and entertainment. One example Mr Houser cited were switching from polite bloodless deaths portrayed in most western movies to more unpleasant and realistic violence.

This sounds excellent. I was sorry to have missed the GTA4 expansion (currently 360 exclusive but hopefully that’s a timed exclusive that will soon expire), but this looks much bigger and better. This is easily at the top of my most anticipated 2009 games.