PLAYSTATION 3 RUMORS - ALREADY?

Well, Playstation 2 has only been out since 2000, and already rumors and media leakage is occuring from Sony regarding Playstation 3...or is it. So far they've sold about 33 Million PS2, not that I'm surprised. I've personally spoken to two direct Sony reps, who have insider information about their products, and one guy, a Sony Hardware Merchandising and Distribution Rep, told me that the PS3 was coming out in 2004. He told me that due to the superiority of the X-Box, Sony wants ramp up the PS3 ahead a year because they want to keep ahead of what Microsoft is doing or planning. I was told that the PS3 would be like nothing that came before and should remain the dominant gaming system until 2010.

Another rep, a lady I spoke with, (I only get to see her maybe once every couple months) who basically was related to marketing the PS2 in retail chains told me that PS3 is not appearing until 2006, and will be totally online. She told me that the other Sony guy wasn't supposed to talk about confidential corporate strategy, but since I already knew it didn't matter. She said that PS3 will be integrated with another Sony unit and be totally online in some fashion with photorealistic gaming. I agree that the next logical step in gaming is photorealism, it's a natural progression from where video game graphics currently are.

In a recent press release leak, Kenichi Fukunaga, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment claims that the functions of the PS3 will in fact be integrated with other products, or embedded into digital appliances, and it will utilize a matrixlike (*shudder*) distributive computing schematic, where each PS3 component will act as a fraction or node of the total processing capacity of all the networked PS3's, essentially a worldwide computer grid made of PS3s. By 2005 Sony wants to have a specialized chip produced in coordination with Toshiba and IBM. Their four year project is being codenamed "cell." Apparently, this type of networked computing will allow for photorealismm and realtime AI over broadband connections. Pretty freaky, and I just don't get it, what, you won't buy games from the store anymore? I kind of don't like the idea of having the game stored only on a hard drive, or paying a monthly fee to play games that I will never officially own. Yes, this is cable TV again, but I still like owning my game library, and I personally wouldn't want to give up being able to keep my game as a testiment to my effort I put forth in finishing it.