PS3: more information

At the toy show in Tokyo, another valuable piece of information was learned about Sony’s next-generation console.

We already knew before that the PlayStation 3 will be backwards compatible, so PSOne and PS2 games will run smoothly, but the latest announcement says Sega MegaDrive / Genesis and NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx will also be emulable on it.

At the "Tokyo Game Show 2006," Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, outlined in his long-term vision a future in which the PS3 will be not just a simple consumer electronics accessory, but a multifunctional device that meets all needs. He mentioned the possibility of online shopping and banking as examples.

In its writing, DailyTech reports that the price of games released for the PS3 will be $ 59,99, which means 13 thousand editions per software, expressed in HUF. Of course, this starting price is likely to drop after the console premiere. By comparison, it’s worth mentioning the Xbox 360, which is much cheaper on its own, as well as games that can be purchased for about $ 10 less.

One of the most successful games on PlayStation consoles is the Gran Turismo series, with Sony having a very interesting pricing policy for the latest PS3. The information below may seem shocking and even gossipy at first, but considering that these claims were made by one of GT’s leading programmers (Kazunori Yamauchi), it’s already worth taking them seriously and treating them as a fact.

The car game will appear in two versions at once:

• Gran Turismo HD Classic: a fully decommissioned version with no cars or tracks. These can be purchased online: you can choose from about 750 cars for around 50-100 yen each, while the more than 50 tracks can be downloaded for 200-500 Japanese currencies each.
• Gran Turismo HD Premium: by default you can choose from 30 cars and 2 tracks, which can of course be further expanded for some money. If you can believe the preliminary rumors, you can also expect nicer graphics compared to the Classich.

With the above prices, it is easy to calculate that if we want to make all vehicles and tracks available, we have to pay $ 851 for it, which corresponds to about 179 thousand forints. That’s not a small amount, of course Sony also has to cover some of the cost of the console from something, yet it seems like a weird solution. This could put Microsoft's rival gaming program, Forza Motorsport 2007 on Xbox 360 in early 2, which also includes several hundred cars and plenty of racetracks.