Speaking on the sidelines of Sony's PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo, its controversial president, Ken Kutaragi, has again managed to confuse most and enlighten few.
Mr. Kutaragi's foremost concern was to convince consumers that the PS3 will offer full time-proofing since he claimed that ...we're looking at a life cycle of 10 years with the PlayStation 3. This is consistent with the PS2 life cycle and with the various announced features of Sony's new console. Mr. Kutaragi also added that: We're currently shifting from standard TVs to HDTVs. But in the next couple of years most flat-panel TVs will be full HD. We're releasing the PS3 with full HD features from the start so that consumers won't have to buy another version of the console in the future. For the same reason, we're using Blu-ray as the PS3's disc format. That last comment may be considered a dig at MS since XBox 360 is unlikely to feature any new DVD technology.
Where Ken Kutaragi's star really shone though was when he was asked, once again, to comment on the PS3 price: ...PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households.... said Mr. Kutaragi confusing almost everyone present at the show. While the possibility of selling consoles to companies may be considered counter-productive it is more likely that Mr.Kutaragi chose this odd expression in order to stress that the PS3 will be expensive.
The real purpose of the show however, was the good news of the release of the PS3 SDK which Mr. Kutaragi described using a variety of slides. Sony has already shipped about 500 kits to developers while a total of 3,000 should be out by October 2005.