Playstation2: Dreamcast's Nightmare

The Playstation2 is set to hit the Japanese market March 4, 2000, and the North American release will be in the fall of 2000. Normally, the release of a videogame system wouldn't have a lot of business being discussed on a DVD website, but the PS2 is unlike anything we've ever seen before.

Not only does the Playstation2 have more computing power than any consumer device (including personal computers) ever, it incorporates a 4X DVD-ROM drive in its specifications.

The heart of the Playstation2, however, is games, and it is a very robust unit for this. The system is so powerful that it can render 75 million polygons per second. To put this into perspective, rendering the film Toy Story in real time is not an unrealistic job for the Playstation2. Early footage of Gran Turismo 2000 shows that a video game can now be

Gran Turismo 2000
photo-realistic. Even filmmakers (including Lucas and Spielberg) have been wondering about the possibility of using the technology in the Playstation2 for film rendering jobs (and Sony plans to license it, so they should be able to).

Now Sony could have followed the same route that Nintendo is apparently taking, and reduced the price of the Playstation2 simply by removing some of the more expensive features like the ability to play movies, but they didn't. They went the other way. Not only can the Playstation2 play DVD movies, it's a very good DVD player.



Digital Audio Out and AV Port It features the ability to play any DVD movie, and it supports both Dolby Digital and DTS sound. Picture quality should be fantastic, as the Emotion Engine (the central processor) in the Playstation2 is much faster than any of the MPEG2 decompression chips currently included in stand-alone DVD players. It should be able to decompress a film with incredible picture quality, and run upstairs to get you a coffee while you watch.


Even with all this, though, that doesn't tap into the Playstation2's exciting potential.

Those of us who have been following DVD for the past few years know full well that it's here to stay. Sony has realized this as well, and has built the PS2 for longevity.

You see, one of the things the Playstation2 features is untapped expandability through standard port types. On the side of the Playstation2 is a PC Card (aka PCMCIA) type III interface, which should allow for network cards, hard drives, and all sorts of other peripherals. In the front are two USB ports (the same type provided on all new Macs and PCs), and a FireWire (AKA iLink) interface.

In fact, the only interface on the unit which is proprietary is the video connector interface, but I'll get to that in a bit.
USB and Firewire




PCMCIA Type III
Now all these expansion ports may not mean a lot at the time of launch for the system, they do give it an incredibly long life-span. For example, one of the common complaints I've heard is that the inclusion of only two controller ports means four player gaming is not possible without a multi-tap. The thing the complainers are forgetting are the two USB ports. Using device chaining, each of those ports can hold up to 127 controllers. Should be more than enough to play multiplayer Quake III.

Also, all these expansion ports can be used for other things as well. There are several PC Card hard drives out there for notebooks, and they could easily be adapted to the Playstation2. The Firewire or USB ports could be used for high speed Internet access, and the FireWire port is the same type used on the new Digital Video (DV) and Digital8 camcorders. This means if you have a storage device and the right software, you can edit your home movies on your Playstation.

Not only that, but the Playstation2 could very easily represent the future in home movie viewing. With a decent amount of storage, or a very fast broadband Internet connection, the Playstation2 is capable of delivering DVD quality movies to your home on demand, and Sony has thought of this. In time, you should be able to plug your PS2 into your cable or satellite feed, download Pay Per View movies, and watch them at your leisure. If Divx wasn't already dead, it certainly would be now.

Of course longevity also means that the Playstation2 has to keep future video standards in mind, and Sony has. The Playstation2 is compatible with HDTV out of the box. This means that if you're lucky enough to own a high definition television at this point in the game, you can play Gran Turismo 2000 at incredible resolutions. Also, it should do a nice job of outputting a high quality anamorphic signal to your television when you're playing your DVDs (no word on line-doubling yet, but I wouldn't hold my breath).

Now, the obvious question is why would Sony offer so much power in such an affordable package? After all, isn't the Playstation2 going to hurt Sony's DVD player sales?

The quick and obvious answer is yes. But of course it helps Sony in other ways.

To understand Sony's reasoning, you have to look at their balance sheets for the past few years. Playstation revenues have accounted for 40% of Sony's revenues for the past few years running, and Sony has had record revenues. The Playstation is important to Sony's continued success, and Sony intends to keep it that way.

In the past, the video game company which has been at the top of the heap (Atari, Nintendo, Sega) has lost their grip on the marketplace with the next iteration of their hardware. The reason this has happened is because the company in question has invariably waited too long to release their next system.

Atari started the modern video gaming trend way back when with the Atari 2600. They release the 5200 as a successor, but it never really took off. Then when they released the true "son of 2600", the 7800, Nintendo had already arrived with the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Nintendo rode the NES wave to billions of dollars in cash surplus, so they were in no rush to break that streak, and held back the Super Nintendo for several years. In the meantime Sega, who had a huge failure with the Sega Master System, released the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive in Europe and Japan) and found success. Then Sega screwed up the launch of the Saturn, and Sony took over with the Playstation.

Sony has studied the past failures of its competitors, and is capitalizing on them. It's no coincidence that this announcement comes less than a week after Sega's North American launch of the Dreamcast (and the original Playstation2 announcement was made shortly after Sega's Japanese Dreamcast launch). Sony is very deliberately trying to hurt their most dangerous competitor by undermining their launch. Couple these tactics with the fact that Sega is more than a billion dollars in debt and is considered a very risky investment on the Tokyo stock exchange, and you realize what a precarious position Sega is in.

Nintendo, on the other hand, is in a better position. The Nintendo 64 is still doing well in North America (although not in Japan), and Nintendo has announced the Dolphin, the N64's successor, which they claim will be out by Christmas of 2000.



Playstation2 DVD


Now, the thing to realize about Nintendo is that they're notorious for announcing and then delaying products. They have yet to release a product on time. The Nintendo 64, as an example, was two years late. The Dolphin is not going to make its release date, and Sony knows it. That's why they're focusing on Sega at this point. Once they're done with Sonic, they'll move on to Mario.

History has proven time and time again that the video game market is only big enough for two competitors. In the next generation of video gaming, those competitors will be Nintendo and Sony. Sony knows this, and that's what their tactics thus far are showing. Sega is scared, and that shows as well (i.e. the day after the PS2 was announced as having DVD, Sega claimed the Dreamcast would have DVD as well...in a future iteration. Yeah, right).

Of course, the fact that Playstation2 plays DVD movies is very deliberate as well. It not only offers a way to compete directly with Nintendo (they've announced the Dolphin will not play movies) on more than just games, but it also establishes the Playstation2 as the heart of a home entertainment console.

Imagine having one box for watching DVD movies, downloading pay-per-view, browsing the Internet and playing games. It sounds like a dream come true, and it is.

The "all-in-one set-top-box" has been attempted before, but all the companies who have tried it have failed. The reason why is that the hardware simply didn't do enough. The Phillips CDi, Commodore CDTV and 3D0 Multiplayer were all ahead of their time and too expensive. They lacked the muscle to really impress people. The WebTV suffers from the lack of a CD or DVD-ROM drive, and cable-boxes are just too limited in their functionality. Even Panasonic realized that the market was a tough nut to crack, so killed the 3D0 M2 before it ever hit the market. The less said about the Pippin, the better.

The Playstation2 represents the first time that an electronics giant has thrown all their R&D muscle behind this concept and shown what can truly be done. Sony has spent a billion dollars developing this thing, and it shows. The design has everything that anyone could want, and it offers features people have been asking for for years: scalability and compatibility. People can still play their old Playstation games, but the machine has room to grow in the future.

The Playstation2 also represents revenue growth for other areas of Sony as well. Keep in mind that Sony owns Columbia Tristar, who are responsible for some of the best produced DVDs on the planet. Combine that with the fact that DVD hasn't been doing very well in Japan and Europe, and you get a nice kickstart for the DVD format in other regions.

To see what a boost this could mean for DVD, you only have to see that the original Playstation has now sold over 60 million units worldwide. That's a staggering number for ANY piece of electronics, and the Playstation2 should only see that grow.

Sony has stated that they expect the Playstation2 to be a viable entertainment platform for ten years. I suspect that they're right. It's the first time I've seen a company hit the nail right on the head. Sony asked consumers what they wanted in a home entertainment unit, and then went to the trouble to give them what they asked for.

By the way, Sony expects to sell a million Playstation2 units in the first 48 hours after launch. To put that into perspective, at the current exchange rate that equals about $370 million in revenue over two days. If all the people who purchase them don't buy any games. If each unit purchased goes out with one game (far from unrealistic), add another $50 million to the pot. Stunning if it's achieved.

Last week's quote of the week was answered correctly by Troy Smith. He correctly identified the quote as coming from October Sky.

This week's quote is video game related, but is still from a movie. As usual, if you know where it's from, email me at ken@dvdfuture.com

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"