The ΓÇ£next generationΓÇ¥ war between Sony, Sega and Nintendo, has heated up again. Sega caught the competition napping last year when it released the Saturn platform ahead of schedule, becoming the first major hardware creator to distribute a 32 bit system. Last month, Sony struck back with their long-awaited 32 bit cd-rom system, The Playstation, priced at a low $299, outstripping the Saturn's $399 retail price.
Only 15 titles are currently available for the system, however Sony predicts that there will be more than 50 titles by Christmas. The companyΓÇÖs multi-million dollar advertising campaign is built around riot grrrl Sonia, from the game BatteArena Toh Shin Den. Playing very much like a Virua Fighter on speed, the 3D perspective of Toh Shin Den allows you much more freedom of movement and new strategies to pound your friends into the dirt. The titles WarHawk and Wipeout also provide a dramatic example of the power of the new system. Ridge Racer, the first driving game for the system, is the best racer on any video game console yet. The action is blazing quick, and the graphics are much better than Daytona USA's, especially the horizon point which is much farther down the roadway than any of the competitionΓÇÖs speedways.
From a technical standpoint, the Playstation is the most advanced system on the racks. The main 32-bit RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) R3000A chip is loaded with hidden goodies like a 66 MIPS Geometry Transfer Engine-that can move 4.5 million polygons a second. The Playstation uses Sony's own 80 MIPS MDEC video compression hardware, for full screen, high quality playback and to push graphics into fast video ram. What you can expect is up to 16,770,000 colors at it's 640 x 480 resolution. This deck is no slouch in the sound department either, with 24 channels of 16 bit CD quality (44.1 khz) audio. All this with 2MB of system RAM and JPEG decompressionΓÇöfor 35 minutes of near VHS quality video on one CD. The Playstation connects well with other systems, as it has built in connections for video, S-Video, RGB output, stereo output and, of course, an RF converter.
If you actually understand all this hardware jargon, youΓÇÖll realize weΓÇÖre talking a way impressive piece of gaming technology.
