Sony has managed to steal some of the console limelight that Microsoft has recently been hogging but it seems that it may be for all the wrong reasons. Developers also complaining about Sony failure to provide updated kits.
Sony semiconductor chief, Kenshi Manabe, told financial analysts that, The Cell chip is as good as the Pentium, if not better.... Gone are the firm words of confidence and the revolution in processing rhetoric Sony execs were so fond of earlier in the year; it seems now that creating a chip that can rival Intel's range is all that the company is asking for.
These comments come at a time when Sony is beginning to feel the heat regarding the possible commercial uses of the Cell processor. Sony needs the chip to prove a winner as the electronics division has been losing money for the past two years. Sony has been resisting the pressure to reveal its plans for the Cell chip and instead claims that all current Cell production will go to the PS3 console in order to have plenty of units available at launch. This however, comes as a surprise to a lot of game developers who claim that Sony has not managed to provide new kits that include nVidia's graphics chip as promised earlier.
As the pressure to have launch titles ready for spring mounts, developers are complaining and one developer is quoted by Business Week as stating: ...the machine we have is 10 times slower than the PS3 should be, the graphics chip was supposed to be ready by November. But we're still waiting.
As Sony has not gone official with a launch date for PS3 it would be futile to attempt to speculate on a delay but the spring date expected by most seems just about right as long as the company manages to deliver new versions of the console to developers soon.
Most analysts seem to be confident that the Cell chip will eventually find its way and many expect it to prove useful in such wide ranging fields as 3D design, medical imaging and military applications.
