PS3 - COLLADA

[firen]

Toronto, Canada - September 29, 2005 - Alias ? announced today that its FBX ? software development kit (SDK) - the most widely used and supported file interchange platform in the digital entertainment content development community - will soon incorporate support for third party file formats, including COLLADA? . As an XML-based, multi-vendor exchange format launched by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., COLLADA was recently adopted as an open-standard initiative by the Khronos? Group and is used by game content developers - particularly those developing art assets for the PLAYSTATION ? 3 computer entertainment system and wireless handheld devices. The announcement to support COLLADA, and other third party formats commonly used by the CG industry, marks the beginning of a new development strategy for the FBX SDK.

Source

oh and...

COLLADA is a COLLAborative Design Activity for establishing an interchange file format for interactive 3D applications, originally established by Sony. Solutions already exist to transport data from one Digital Content Creation (DCC) tool to another with various degrees of success. Only a few are exposing the intermediate format that is used for this purpose though.

COLLADA defines a standard XML schema for data interchange. The COLLADA format is the official 3D model interchange format for use on the Playstation 3 console. It was accepted as an industry standard by the Khronos Group on the 1st of August 2005.

Official COLLADA site

[shao]

let's be honest. sony need all the help they can get when it comes to easing the development of games on their consoles, especially ps3. their 'out of the box' development environment - even with the recent licensing / purchases they've made, is hardly ideal.