Well, PS2 has been out for a while now and I for one am loving it. With great games like SSX, Armored Core 2, TTT, and DOA2 to name a few, the system is going to be a bigg success. But more systems are on the way, with sega out of the way and microsoft and Nintendo gearing up for there new systems the competion is going to more exciting than ever. Check out my reviews section for reviews on the games I've played.
Ealier today Sony held a confrence to show off the technological wonders of Playstation 2. Three demos were
shown.
Demo 1 included: Gran Turismo (on PSX2), the R4 girl (winking and
dancing), the new Square fighter, another Square demo with an older man talking and blinking, and the ballroom sequence from Final Fantasy VIII running in realtime polygonal action.
Demo 2 included: More of the R4 babe, Final Fantasy old guy, better footage of Gran Turismo, excellent footage of the Tekken demo, and Crash Bandicoot being chased by dozens of penguins.
Demo 3 included: Footage directly from the conference, as well as those weird feather/fur motion demos that look rather odd in still screens...but make sense when they're moving.
The word is that sony is going to take a new approach with the sale of PSX2 when it's released in japan. Instead of selling it at normal electronic and toy stores, PS2 will only be sold at selected sony shops, a chian of sony owned stores throughout Japan. There are about 2000 total. This move is supposed to generate hype toward sony's stores. It's currently unknown, if or not, they will do this in the U.S. The system will make it's debut at the Tokyo Game Show on 9/17/99.
The two most important chips of the PlayStation are the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesizer. These are the two big sections with fans on them. Apparently, each heats up to extreme temperatures and they require their own fans! Woah.
In the upper right corner is the I/O processor (it reads LSI upside down), which is very similar to the central chip in the PlayStation. This enables backward compatibility to take place in the PlayStation II.
Graphics: "Graphics Synthesizer"
Clock Frequency: 150MHz
DRAM Bus bandwidth: 48 GB Per Second
DRAM Bus width: 256 bits
Pixel Configuration: RGB:Alpha:Z Buffer (24:8:32)
Maximum Polygon Rate: 75 Million Polygons Per Second
Sound: "SPU2+CPU"
Number of voices: ADPCM: 48 channel on SPU2 plus definable by software Sampling Frequency: 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz (selectable)I/O Processor
CPU Core: Current PlayStation CPUDisc Media: DVD-ROM (CDROM compatible)
Dark Cloud Preview(RPG, Sony) COMING SOON
Metal Gear Solid 2 Preview(Stealth-based Action, Konami)
Tekken Tag Tournament(Fighting, Namco) Score: 9
SSX(sports-racing, EA-Big)
Amored Core 2(mech-based action,from software)
Timesplitters(First-person-shooter, FreeRadical, Edios)
Dead Or Alive(fighting, Tecmo)
Ring OF Red(strategic-sim, Konami)
The Bouncer(Fighting-action, Square)
Kessen(Strategic sim, KOEI) Score: 7