Sony has revealed plans to re-release PS2 as PS Two, to offer PS3 in a PSX style package for approximately 600-700 Euros and to distribute content, including games, for PS3 electronically by 2006.
An in-depth interview with SCEE president and COO David Reeves leaves few of the company's future plans to the imagination. The interview appeared on Playstation's official web site and many call it a PR blunder, not believing that such information could have appeared willingly since Sony is usually very secretive about its future projects. The interview is still up on the Playstation.com site, for the time being, and can be found by following the download tab above.
In the interview David Reeves mentions Sony's plans to re-release the PS2 in a slimmer version which he calls PS Two. He also suggests that PS3 will become available in a, fully-featured, PSX style version and in a cheaper gaming-only version.
David Reeves also mentioned the PSP and claims that games will most likely not have regional coding while movies almost certainly will. When asked to describe the PSP Mr. Reeves said It's not, as people have said, a new Game Boy. There are so many other features that you can add onto it, whether it's GPS or GPRS even.
Regarding PSPs launch the interview further confused the subject since the initial 2004 date had been challenged by Sony who hinted at a 2005 US release but SCEE'S boss claims I'm pretty confident that it will come out in calendar year 2004. Emulators are out, and I think dev kits will probably go out in March or April...
Reeves also addressed another issue which had come up with the PSP regarding the amount of RAM it will have, claiming that it will have 30Mb of RAM, now (which it didn't have before).
The question of how PSP compares to Sony's other two consoles, PS One and PS 2, also came up and the reply was that the handheld will lie in the No Mans Land between its two bigger relatives, although people who get an early start - probably someone like Square - will take it beyond PS2. Because it's a small screen, it will just look... there's so much depth and perspective on that size screen, it will look better than PS2.
Will it play as fast? Probably, technically, just a little bit below...
There was also talk about the look of the PSP since the image to your right was only a concept design. Mr. Reeves suggested that that design was by no means the final one and even added that I honestly don't know if it'll look like that or not.
Talking about Sony's proprietary format, UMD Reeves said I think they will come up with quite a few surprises, so that you'd want to buy a movie on UMD as well as having it on DVD.
The interview however, did not stop at the PSP and addressed Sony's upcoming PS3 console. Mr. Reeves hinted that Sony might release two versions of PS3, one which will act as the main home media centre and will include features like a hard-drive and another, normal PS3 for gamers, who just want to play the movies and have better games. So you might see two versions; one is a home server, the other is for someone that can't afford whatever it might be, 600 or 700 Euros, and wants just to pay 200 Euros for a new generation games machine.
According to Reeves Sony's ultimate goal, of course, is to get into electronic broadband distribution... Sony is hoping that it can use the next 3-4 years in order to educate consumers in the use of broadband distribution, once that is done and if broadband has become widely available it will launch such a system for the PS3. This would be feasible if connection speeds reached 2 or 3Mb, something like that... Ken's (Kutaragi) even talking about 30Mb!
Finally Mr. Reeves hinted at an E3 surprise by Sony claiming that PSX and PSP may not be the only two hardware residents in Sony's booth. We made a change from PlayStation to PS one, so we may, in the course of time, make some cosmetic changes to PlayStation 2 and come out with something that's a little bit sexier, but probably no changes to specs or anything like that.
