At the TGS, PC Watch interviewed Masayuki Chatani, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.’s Chief Technology Officer. GameGeekNews was kind enough to provide a babelfished translation. (See below.)

First of all, Mr. Chatani says that the HDMI outputs on the PS3 are fully compliant to the HDMI spec (though he didn’t say which version) and that they support audio. Also, Mr. Chatani says that though the first display can be HDTV, the second display doesn’t have to be. Things brings up all sorts of possibilities. You could be playing a game and have a buddy come up via IM and have that appear in the second display. The chat window seems to be part of the PS3 OS itself, and you can make it show up on the main display or the secondary display, without support from the game itself.

Mr. Chatani also said that all the memory card slots will be treated equally, and that you’ll be able to save to any of them or get data/music/etc from any of them.

Some have speculated that the BD-ROM drive in the PS3 won’t be the standard BD format we’ll see in standalone BD players. Mr. Chatani shoots a bullet in that speculation by saying that they’re waiting for the BD-ROM spec to be finalized at which point the PS3 will be made to support it too.

The PS3 doesn’t have a dedicated sound chip because the Cell processor is plenty powerful enough to handle game and audio chores at the same time. With 7 SPE’s, it better be. They’re also working hard to make the PS3 even quieter than the PS2, which would be great. I don’t like extraneous noise of any kind.

GameGeekNews – Sony’s Chief Technology Officer Talks PS3. Read!
PC Watch Original Japanese Interview