http://ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=61569
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 Continuing its GDC Europe series, Gamasutra 
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/2...enkins_01.shtml has just posted a 
transcript of a talk by Sony Europe's George Bain. He didn't have an actual 
PS3 development kit, and there's still not too much detail, but some 
interesting tidbits nonetheless.

On the boomerang controller:

Quote:
Bain paused to discuss the new controllers in more detail. He reiterated 
that the new boomerang designs were concepts only and were not necessarily 
representative of the final retail models.


On the hard disk:

Quote:
Bain also touched upon the PlayStation 3's removable hard drive, confirming 
that Sony did consider it an important peripheral, but saying that the 
company had not yet decided its price, its size or - most importantly - 
whether it would be bundled with the console or available only as a stand 
alone extra.


Thank you, Microsoft, for allowing Sony the easy way out on this peripheral.

On the Cell architecture and the mysteriously missing eigth SPE:

Quote:
Concerning the individual SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements) of the Cell 
chip, Bain emphasized that it was no longer necessary to program in assembly 
language to achieve superior performance, although this did still exist as 
an option. In response to an audience question it was also confirmed that 
although each Cell chip will feature eight SPEs this was purely to guarantee 
seven working elements - even if the eighth SPE did work it would be fused 
during the manufacturing process and could not be used in any way.


On the difficulty of developing for Sony consoles:

Quote:
[H]e acknowledged that the PlayStation 2 had proven difficult to program for 
and assured the audience that Sony had learnt its lesson. Bain suggested 
that this was one reason for using NVidia's graphics technology, since it 
would enable the use of more widely familiar APIs. OpenGL ES, described as a 
lightweight subset of OpenGL, was being used for the same reason and was 
part of what was explained as a very different approach to graphics when 
compared to the PlayStation 2.

[...] [The SDK] would include all existing PlayStation tools as well as 
fully licensed versions of physics tools Havok Complete and AGEIA's NovodeX. 
These will be available free to use for developers and will require no 
additional licensing fee to publish games using the technology.

After admitting that the PlayStation 2's default compiler was "rubbish", 
Bain also indicated that SN System's new compiler would also be included in 
the SDK, along with support for (but not free licensing of) Epic Games' 
Unreal Engine 3. He emphasized that the Unreal Engine 3 demo shown at E3 was 
"real" and proceeded to display some new screenshots using the engine which 
if they were, as claimed, real-time were certainly on a par with the kind of 
imagery seen in the infamous E3 Killzone demonstration.
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