PlayStation 2 Cometh

After all the talk and speculation about the future of Sony's next console, Sony may be getting ready to unleash a gaming tsunami of epic proportions tomorrow when the company is expected to reveal new PlayStation 2 information at a developer's conference in Tokyo. It will be a full house packed with journalists and developers from around the world - and hopefully the show won't disappoint.

The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Monday morning edition that Sony will introduce a new video game machine (reportedly called "PlayStation 2") before March 2000 featuring the Emotion Engine processor codeveloped by Toshiba and SCEI. Additionally, the machine will be able to play DVD movies. According to the report, even though it will be several times more powerful than Intel's Pentium III, it will cost less than a PC (which runs about 100,000 yen in Japan - about US$840). Because the new console will use DVD as its delivery format, it will increase data capacity per disc by seven to eight times to just under 5 gigabytes.

Development of the Emotion Engine chip has cost Sony and Toshiba nearly 10 billion yen ($84 million) and is not just a move to become the dominant force in the video game market, but possibly to take over Intel and Microsoft's hold on the microchip market. A Sony executive, as quoted by the paper, said, "We take aim at the stranglehold on the chip/operating system market enjoyed by the Intel-Microsoft alliance." He went on to say that the major wars in the technology market will be fought over entertainment applications, not over business-related applications.

The article goes on to hype the system's capabilities, saying that it will be able to produce images with the quality of Disney/Pixar's Toy Story (remember when Nintendo said the N64 would have Jurassic Park and T2-quality effects when the Project Reality was first announced?), and that it will be able to handle 50 times more 3D data than the Dreamcast.