By Mike Smith

Ken Kutaragi of Sony address HDTV and the cell processor

Speaking at the Tokyo International Digital Conference, Sony's Ken Kutaragi commented on frame rate and HDTV compatibility of the new PS3.

"I want to deliver some kind of a little dream of mine to you", said Kutaragi i opening his keynote to the audience.. He was speaking in regards the Cell processor designed and manufactured in cooperation with Toshiba and IBM.

Kutaragi began by talking about frame rate. He explained that people will discover a new frame rate which will “become the benchmark for coming generations of digital life.” Currently we use 50 to 60 for our TV’s and as high as 72 to 90 for the PC.

By Dave Crain

Sony invites both noice and professional game designers to develop games for the PS3

Sony has developed a program allowing gamers to be part of the PlayStation 3 production process. Amongst other features, the program urges gamers to create in-game scenarios and allows the ability to design schematics for new PS3 games.

The program called “Game Yaroze” which translates to “Lets Play Games” is not making it’s first appearance. Sony initially introduced the program in 1995 after the launch of the PlayStation 1.

By Ron Swerdfiger

Video game heavyweight opens new studio in Toronto

When you think of where video game developers come from, Canada is probably not your first choice. However, Koei Co. Ltd. knows that Canada can produce more than good hockey players and cold weather. Koie has recently opened a studio in Toronto

When Koei hires employees in Japan, the new recruits are put through a whole year of training before they can join the creative team

When Koei hires for the development office it opened Tuesday in Toronto, the university graduates will go straight to work. Though the management approach to each office is identical, Canadian students have the benefit of a quality university education and higher technical skills and experience. “They can join the team immediately,” said Yoichi Erikawa, Koei’s found and chief adviser.

By Tie Adams

Sony will add a parental control chip to the PS3

After a recent discussion with the Tokyo government, Sony confirmed that the PS3 will feature a comprehensive parental control system. Sony firmly believes that the accessibility control should be in the hands of each parental figure.

This move takes the heat off of developer, retailers and publishers who have been under considerable pressure the last few months due in part to the recent exploits in games such as Grand Theft Auto and other popular titles.

By Ron Swerdfiger

A close look at the Sony Playstation 3 specs

Playstation 3 Specs

CPU
Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU
RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines