First PS2 Board Shots

TOKYO - The first pictures of a PlayStation 2 main board prototype were released Monday morning by Nikkei news. The boards show off a fairly busy design lacking board controller ports, power, and video output ports. Assumedly, the PlayStation 2 could employ the same series of plug in ports as it did on the PlayStation.

The two chips hidden under fans are the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesizer (in the second close-up shot, the Emotion Engine is on the left and the Graphics Synthesizer is on the right). Immediately to the top of the duo is a smaller processor bearing the LSI logo - we assume this to be the I/O chip that will give the PlayStation 2 its ability to play current PlayStation titles.

While no shots currently exist showing what the outside of the PlayStation 2 will look like we know what the design team has to work with under the hood.