Wahoo! you can now buy it in Japan, Europe and the US of A! Most reviews say that the games are an evolution, not a revolution - but I imagine once the programmers get used to the possibilites... Just compare the difference between Ridge Racer 1, and 4. More as it happens.
Here is where I shall attempt to keep up to date with PS2 news.
 | Cost: 39,800 Yen (approx £230), currently costing £299 in the UK. |
| Backwards compatible with Playstation, both with games (90%), and peripherals (99%). |
| Faster, bigger memory cards (8 MB) are used, they transfer data 250 times faster than the old 1MB ones. |
| New all analogue (except for start and select buttons) Joypads, intended to get more "emotional response" from when you play games, hit a button hard and your character might be aggressive, soft and they are for concilatory. |
| Optional modem (connections for phone, cable and cellular). To reduce cost, and allow hardware updates this will not be built-in. |
| Connection time with I-link (for camcorders/digital cameras), and USB interfaces, not that these WILL be used, but can be used. |
| DVD, to be playable "from the box", games will be DVD-ROM which hold 4.7GB of data, the player will be 24-speed. |
| The HDD will supposedly be 30GB and pre-installed for UK PS2's, but this is "not finalised". |
Official specs:
CPU: 128 bit “Emotion Engine”
- System Clock: 300 MHz
- System Memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus
- Memory Bus Bandwidth: 3.2 GB per second
- Vector Units: VU0 and VU1 (Floating Pointt Multiply Accumulator x 9, Floating Point
Divider x 1)
- Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS
- Compressed Image Decoder: MPEG2
Graphics: “Graphics Synthesizer”
- Clock Frequency: 150 MHz
- DRAM Bus bandwidth: 48 GB per second
- DRAM Bus width: 2560 bits
- Pixel Configuration: RGB:Alpha Z Buffer ((24:8:32)
- Maximum Polygon Rate: 75 Million Polygonss Per Second
Sound “SPU2+CPU”
- Number of voices: ADPCM: 48 channel on SPPU2 plus definable by software
- Sampling Frequency: 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz (sselectable)
-2MB of audio RAM
-Optical Out: This allows you to connect too a Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS surround sound
system.
I/O Processor
- CPU Core: Current PlayStation CPU
- Clock Frequency: 33.8 MHz or 37.5 MHz (seelectable)
- Sub Bus: 32 Bit
- Interface Types: IEEE1394, Universal Seriial Bus (USB)
- Communication via PC-Card PCMCIA
Disc Media: DVD-ROM (CD-ROM Compatible)
Hard Drive Bay: A way to connect a hard drive in the future.
