Highlights from Sony Keynote at TGS 2006

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Check out all the plans that Kutaragi outlined in Sony's keynote speech for the PlayStation 3.

The most notable talking point of the event has been Kutaragi's over all theme of networking. After showing a series of trailers, some new and some seen at E3, Kutaragi goes on to talk about Sony's basic interest in networks and community. Kutaragi feels that networking is not at the point where it needs to be. A basic server still does not have the internal bus speed of the PlayStation One. The hope is that in ten years, it's possible that something like the PlayStation 3 will be overkill. He continues to drop hints at Sony's overall "live" plan with talk about emulation on the PS3 and user shared content (he even throws in a YouTube reference).

To help facilitate this networking ideal, Sony is currently making plans to have 15,000 PS3 units installed in stores around the world. All these PS3's would be connected via network and then used as promotional tools. While this is not set in stone, Sony is currently in talks with retailers. They are also considering having the retail kiosks used as arcade-style station, where people can pay 100 yen or so to play a game.

Shortly after Kutaragi speech the floor was opened up to some Q&A from the audience and some interesting news about the PS3 hardware configurations was released. Most notably was that all PS3 versions will now come standard with the and HDMI port. This corrects earlier news that Sony was only giving HDMI ports to the top tier PS3. Kutaragi explained that Sony was worried that if they put the HDMI in the lower version, some would complain about having to pay for something they don't want.

In the end, we didn't see much shocking news come out of Sony's camp, although the addition of the standard HDMI port is nice. Among the trailers shown like Ridge Racer 7, Virtua Fighter 5, Gundam, Final Fantasy XIII, and Afrika; most seemed to be only slight upgrades from what was seen at E3 or in some cases, the same version. However, it is nice to see that Sony has brought over 200 PS3 systems to the event for people to try out. Hopefully we will get some more news on how the gamers actually feel about the system.

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