PS3 Worldwide Release in November

[AlphaPrime]

Sony Computer Entertainment announced today that its PlayStation 3 will see a simultaneous worldwide release in early November 2006. Hitting shelves in Japan, North America and Europe simultaneously, this marks the first time the computer giant has released any of its PlayStation products to multiple regions at the same time.

While a more specific date other than "early November 2006" wasn't given, it's obvious that Sony aims for the system to hit stores before the holiday shopping period begins. At its recent PlayStation Business Briefing 2006 in Tokyo, the company said it plans to ship one million units per month after launch and will ship a total of six million released solely before year's end.

Featuring high-definition graphics, Blu-ray support for games and movies, broadband connectivity and more, Sony aims to recreate the PlayStation and PlayStation 2's massive success a third time.

Sony today announced that not only is the PlayStation 3 to be 100% backwards compatible, but all legacy titles played on the system will be displayed at high-definition resolutions. The Xbox 360 currently does the same thing and the result on that end is much sharper image quality for older games.

At its PlayStation Business Briefing 2006 in Japan, Sony announced its production plans for BD-ROM discs (Blu-ray). Firstly, all PlayStation 3 games will ship on Blu-ray to help prevent piracy. In other words, no "cheap" DVD releases; Blu-ray only. Of course, it'll still play PS2 and movies on DVD, but all PS3 releases will be on Blu-ray.

As part of the PlayStation Business Brief today in Tokyo, Ken Kutaragi confirmed that the PlayStation 3 will require the hard drive peripheral and the unit will ship with the system right out of the box.

In total, it will be 60GB big, be completely upgradeable, and support Linux OS. Additionally, the peripheral will act as a home server and allow users to store various forms of media to be pulled up elsewhere.

In one of several compelling announcements made in Tokyo at the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing today, SCE president Ken Kutaragi confirmed that the final PS3 development kits will be shipping out to production houses in June. Additionally, there are 15 different companies making tools and middleware for the SDK.

Sony today finally unveiled info on its PlayStation 3 online plans at its PlayStation Business Briefing currently happening in Japan.

Beginning at the system's launch, currently scheduled for sometime this November, the system will feature community tools including lobby matching and voice chat, commerce features that includes bootable software via the hard drive and more.

The service was created with the help of Sony Online Entertainment. Best of all, the "basic" service will be free of charge.

http://ps3.ign.com/

[Xerxes]

Sounds interesting...let me guess, Australia gets it March 2007? :cry: ...

[AlphaPrime]

Sounds interesting...let me guess, Australia gets it March 2007? :cry: ...

We'll see if Sony will be able to pull off an actual worldwide release this time, unlike Microsoft (360 still isn't released in Australia). They seem to have the numbers to do it, so maybe we'll get it November as well.

[SamNeeds]

Sounds good. I should have been in work for a few months by then (finishing college and then progressing to having a job), so i should be able to get one!

[IceBrewedBeer]

Glad to hear that Sony is FINALLY releasing some information to answer some of the questions from that long list we all(most anyways) have.

[Leddy]

Wow. That's a YEAR after Xbox 360.

[AlphaPrime]

Sounds interesting...let me guess, Australia gets it March 2007? :cry: ...

It's confirmed - Australia get's it the same time as well!

"We are absolutely delighted that we will be able to bring PS3 to gamers in Europe and Australia before Christmas. This is an exciting first for Europe, and is a huge endorsement and vote of confidence in the strength of the European market and its importance globally?b>

http://www.scee.presscentre.com/content/de...53&NewsAreaID=2

[dw2003]

What about New Zealand :cry:

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I knew it would be released in November.

[Gabnoj]

What about New Zealand

Dude, I'm in NZ too, just import one from Aus, or Trademe will be swamped with them within a week ;)

Wow...

All games on Blu-ray discs..

Now all I need is a 1080p TV :(

And it is VERY good that it will have an upgradable HDD, that means that the PS3 really will be the all on one home entertainment system that we've been waiting for..

:)

[AlphaPrime]

What about New Zealand :cry:

Should be at around the same time considering your population is a lot smaller than ours.

[Elliot B.]

November 2006? Too late, the Xbox 360 will have been out for over a year. What are Sony playing at, bit slow aren't they? Microsoft got their machines together quickly enough, and I can't see the PS3 being that much more powerful, especially to just justify the extra year of development time.

[AlphaPrime]

November 2006? Too late, the Xbox 360 will have been out for over a year. What are Sony playing at, bit slow aren't they? Microsoft got their machines together quickly enough, and I can't see the PS3 being that much more powerful, especially to just justify the extra year of development time.

And Dreamcast was out a year before the PS2. 360 still isn't out in some countries. Also Microsoft doesn't even have 6 million units available yet, so this fight is only just beginning.

[Elliot B.]

And Dreamcast was out a year before the PS2. 360 still isn't out in some countries. Also Microsoft doesn't even have 6 million units available yet, so this fight is only just beginning.

I'm not saying the X360 will beat the PS3 (in fact, I know it won't), but it still seems like a very late release.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Finally some information! I thought this was going to be another rumour thread when I seen the title..

I wonder when MS will upgrade their hard drives.. :blink:

Sony better not be BS'ing (again) on how "good" the PS3 or they will be in quite a lot of trouble releasing a year later :shiftyninja:

[AlphaPrime]

I'm not saying the X360 will beat the PS3 (in fact, I know it won't), but it still seems like a very late release.

How is it very late? I mean look at the 360, it doesn't have a next-gen optical drive or a next-gen video connector, it's dev-kit was only final not long before launch and there were far from enough consoles for launch. If anything, the Xbox 360 was rushed and launched too early. Revolution will also be out at around the PS3 release. It's only a 7 month to a year difference which is not a lot in the console industry.

[macrosslover]

60gigs is alot of harddrive space really. if they aren't trying to make it into a Tivo like device then there is no reason whatsoever to need all that space for a console, there can be such a thing as overkill. However that said, alot of the things they've said today are promising, but i'll still wait on word of the price. With all this stuff no way it's going to be cheap and I wonder how much using blu-ray disks exclusively will increase development costs for developers.

Also I don't think there's anyway in hell they'll be able to meet 1 million units a month and even if they did it won't be enough for the demand. regardless if the games are crap compared to the contempary 360 games, the ps3 hype machine will be enough to easily sell 1mill units in each region, but i highly doubt they can make that many systems.

i'm glad they are making the harddrive required as i wished 360 did this from the start. this should help alot of load times in games I hope. I wonder if MS will do something later in the year to force a harddrive on people to make it required.

If Nintendo doesn't release their system this year, i wonder how much that will cost them.

sidenote, time to pre-order that sucker now and sell it on ebay for $1k+ lol

Edited March 15, 2006 by macrosslover

[kimzor]

*starts looking for a pre-order* :D

[iwod]

Does that means there OS is gonna be Linux? Or if just have the option to boot linux?

[forster]

Just heard this on the BBC Radio 1 news, Ill still be buying it (Y)

[giga Veteran]

Price?

[AlphaPrime]

Price?

Not yet, although it'd be stupid to give a price now considering how fast hardware components drop in price.

[joker999]

Blu-ray only < haha poor to warez people, i think Blu_ray is up to 50gb right?

[A1Capone]

Price?

same thing I was thinking

[ReAnimation]

Interesting news about the PS3 online service... Apparently its going to be totally free.

"That service, which is clearly designed as a direct competitor to Microsoft's Xbox Live, will be entirely free and will be available from the launch of the console, offering standard features such as game lobbies, player matching, voice chat and a variety of commercial features including software which will be distributed over the network and can be stored on the hard drive."

More details in the link below:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15356

This is going to be a challenge for Live. If the news is true and you will be able to play other people on the PS3 service for free then surely Microsoft are going to have to either reduce the charge or make their Live service free too.