New PlayStation 2 information almost revealed

[04.28.99] » It's hard to tell, with these PR folks.

   Phil Harrison, Vice President of Third Party Relations and Research and Development for Sony Computer Entertainment America, stopped by Stanford University today to demo the Next Generation PlayStation for a group of eager Electrical Engineering students, videogame afficianados, and interested faculty. While the bulk of the lecture focused on the internal chip and system architecture (this was an EE class, after all), a few small tidbits of information were revealed.

   When asked about DVD video playback, Harrison laughed, calling it the "question du jour." Harrison pointed out that the machine already had "two of three components necessary for playback": a DVD drive and an MPEG-2 decoder. The third component, he said, was a "software interface," which Sony was working on - but Sony "has not announced" this interface and "will not announce" it for a while. It is still unknown if DVD Video playback is available immediately out of the box or requires an additional purchase.

   Harrison also confirmed the existence of additional storage media for Sony's new box. In addition to the standard memory card, the PlayStation 2 will support an "enhanced memory card, as well as additional media options." Users will be able to input video and audio through the IEEE1394 and USB ports for storage. Unfortunately, Harrison could not reveal exactly what the additional media options were.

   After showing the recent GDC demos, talk turned to developer support. Harrison said that, given the machine's popularity, Sony was looking to eventually support non-gaming industries and academia with hardware and APIs. He also said that, given the success of the first, Sony was "strongly considering" extending the Yaroze program to their new machine.