GDC Brings PS3 Hardware Surprises

Phil Harrison took to the stage at this week's Game Developers Conference to talk up the PlayStation 3, talk down the PlayStation 3 controller and talk about going region agnostic.

Sony may have made news with its PlayStation 3 revelations last week, but this week's Game Developers Conference brought a few more surprises for the hotly anticipated console.

Many people have been salivating over the PlayStation 3 since it was in the planning stages but the boomerang-shaped controller hasn't curried as much favour. Good thing then that the prototype was nowhere to be seen at the show. Sony's Phil Harrison said in a post-keynote Q&A session that the final version of the controller would be shown at E3, reports 1Up.

He added that the ongoing legal quibble Sony has with US tech firm Immersion is not responsible for Sony pursuing a new design.

Perhaps a bigger surprise was that the rumours of the PlayStation 3 being region agnostic were right. The PlayStation 3 will not employ region lock-outs, which means that like current handhelds games from any region will be playable on systems from any region - good news for importers and early adopters.

Harrison said that developers could go as far as putting all versions of the game, including PAL and NTSC formats, onto one disc. He didn't clarify how this would affect region-specific localisation, which is often cited for the delayed arrival of games in Europe.

One not entirely unexpected downer coming out of the conference was Harrison's admission that Sony will probably not be able to meet demand when the console launches in early November.

"As you can see from our history, Sony has been very good about supporting our hardware launches," Harrison said. "Yes, some consumers will be disappointed, unfortunately. But our ramp-up of over 1 million units per month is the fastest we've ever had."

By the time the PlayStation launches at the end the year, the Xbox 360 will have been out for nearly a year, but this isn't something that Harrison is worried about.

"We've actually never been the first platform to the market in what would be considered the generation shift," Harrison said. "I think what you've seen today and in our previous announcements is that we have a tremendous powerful hardware coupled with an excellent software backing. We're not concerned."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games