America's Army

It reads, "In elementary school kids learn about the actions of the Continental Army that won our freedoms under George Washington and the Army's role in ending Hitler's oppression. It still is not known how Sony has achieved this (although Sony had developed a single-chip PS2 CPU/GPU solution, used in newer revisions of the "slim" PS2). In the Frequently Asked Questions section of the game's official website, its developers argue its suitability for teenagers. The PlayStation 3 will be compatible "on the chip" with PlayStation 2 and PlayStation games, without emulation. The Army Game and its official webpage, which must be visited to be able to play the game, contain links to the army recruitment website goarmy.com, another recruiting tool that, according to the Army Subcommittee Testimony from February 2000, has a higher chance of recruiting than "any other method of contact."[12] Leading American players to the website is a major goal of the game, and it was confirmed that twenty-eight percent of all visitors of America's Army's webpage click through to this recruitment site.[13]. [18]. Instead, it simply expresses a nationalistic sentiment under the guise of realism, being little more than a "naïve and unmediated or reflective conception of aesthetic construction."[11]. The Blu-Ray region code will be different from DVD region code.

Galloway, an assistant professor at New York University notes that, "What is interesting about America's Army, is not the debate over whether it is thinly-veiled propaganda or a legitimate recruitment tool, for it is unabashedly and decisively both, but rather that the central conceit of the game is one of mimetic realism." In his analysis, Galloway concludes that America's Army, despite being a fairly realistic game, with graphics approaching photorealism as well as real-life settings, does not make even the least attempt to achieve narrative realism -- that is, accurately representing what serving a tour in the Army would actually be like. Blu-Ray movies played on the PS3 will use a region code. As well, Alexander R. Sony's decision to stop region coding means consumers will be able to purchase PS3 games from anywhere in the world, which may turn out to be significantly cheaper than purchasing them exclusively from their home territory, or importing the system from Japan on launch. Specifically, a graduate of Utrecht University concluded the game "with its governmental background, is instead of an advergame, better to be described as a propagame."[8] Chris Chambers, the deputy director of development for America's Army, admits it is a recruitment tool,[9] and "the Army readily admits [America's Army is] a propaganda device," wrote Chris Morris, a CNN/Money columnist and director of content development.[10]. According to Ephraim, “If you look at the fact that [the PlayStation 3] will support high-definition TV, which will be a global standard, there’s a good likelihood that it will be global region, as for example we’ve done with the PSP [PlayStation Portable].”. Hence the critics claim that the game creates a false impression of reality. The PS3’s support for HDTV standards was cited as one of the key reasons the company has stopped the practice of region coding.

Army, as well the emotional trauma that real soldiers experience when they are confronted with bloodshed and corpses. Unlike its predecessors, the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2, the PS3 is tipped to allow gaming and movie playback from downloads or discs bought in any part of the world, rather than being limited to playing discs only from a specific region. For example, it has been accused of playing down or excluding negative facets of Army life from its portrayal, such as collateral damage and harassment in the U.S. PlayStation 3 games are unlikely to be region coded, according to Sony’s Australian managing director, Michael Ephraim. Unsurprisingly, a game of this nature has come under criticism. [17]. Army is.". However, the March 2006 issue of PSM magazine reports that Sony intends to launch an online service with the PS3 designed to compete with Microsoft's Xbox Live.

In the official Frequently Asked Questions page the developers, too, confirm that in a statement giving the reason why people outside the United States can play the game: "We want the whole world to know how great the U.S. It also means that there will be different user interfaces for each game depending on the developer. Army. While this will give games publishers greater freedom in terms of what they are able to offer online, some say it may make it more difficult for Sony to control the quality of the online experience. America's Army is intended to give a positive impression of the U.S. Instead, online services for PS3 games will be decentralized and left up to individual game publishers. Apart from the common controversy that surrounds games rewarding the virtual killing of other human beings, America's Army caused additional debate and disagreement that made it become the subject of journalistic and academic research. In an issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine, Sony denied rumors that it would be implementing a centralized online service similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Live.

One, which is always available, allows the "dead" player to choose a member of his own team and see through their eyes; another allows the ghost to rotate his view around the chosen player; there are also certain fixed viewpoints that allow the "dead" player to observe the entire map. Sony has stated that the online service for the PlayStation 3 will use the same non-unified architecture as that of the PlayStation 2. Depending on server configuration, spectators can watch the rest of the round in up to three ways. Sony is providing developers with Linux toolchains where SN Systems will provide more customer-oriented Linux tools at an additional cost. As is not uncommon in multiplayer online games, cheating (such as through the use of wallhacks or aimbots) is still prevalent in America's Army, despite the game being supported by the cheat-prevention utility PunkBuster. In addition, Sony recently purchased SN Systems, a former provider of Microsoft Windows based development tools for a variety of console platforms including the PlayStation 2, GameCube, PSP and Nintendo DS to create additional Linux development tools. Players whose protagonist is dead receive information through the chat and the view as spectator and are capable of using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) communication programs to gain information, especially on players' positions. The list of standards they are reported to be considering includes:.

In contrast to the blacking out of the screen when dead in Counter-Strike, for example, the developers of America's Army have done little so far to prevent spying spectators from communicating with those still playing, which has become a common type of cheating, widely referred to as ghosting. Sublicensed technologies includes:. Any player character killed before the round is over become "spectators"; their chat/voice messages cannot be seen/heard by the players still alive, but they can watch the rest of the round. The list of open standards includes:. [7] Players with a high "HONOR" level are sometimes insulted as addicts. The PlayStation 3, unlike the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 systems, is based on publicly-available application programming interfaces. For this purpose, a separate company has undertaken the task of tracking players and administrating servers. Sony has selected several technologies and arranged several sublicensing agreements to create the software development kit for developers.

Players are automatically banned from all servers when their overall score is too low. However, Epic stated in response that they are working to release the PC version first and that the PS3 version has no priority for release over the PC version. Punished are friendly fire and eliminating objectives which are assigned for protection. In the January issue of the same publication, it was stated that Epic Games is working hard to get Unreal Tournament 2007 ready for the proposed launch in Spring 2006. Rewarded are the achievement of specific mission objectives, killing enemies and healing injured teammates. In the November issue of PSM Magazine, SCEA Chief Operating Officer Jack Tretton mentioned both Lair and Warhawk as launch titles, although Sony would not expand further on his comments. The game features a kind of honor system making use of operant conditioning, which means that gamers who obey to the rules, dubbed "Rules of engagement", are rewarded with experience points or else punished with a decrease of them. At this time, only three games have been mentioned as PS3 launch titles: Lair from Factor 5, Warhawk from Incognito Entertainment, and Unreal Tournament 2007 from Epic Games.

For example, the objective on the SF Hospital map, one of the most played maps, is to kill the rebels' VIP, while the other team's mission is to keep him alive and escort him to the escape zone. One of the most, if not the most anticipated PS3 game up to this point is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which had its first trailer shown at the Tokyo Game Show 2005 event. This happens when the objectives are achieved, all members of the enemy team are killed, or when the round's time limit is reached. Controversial games developers Rockstar North have also hinted that they are planning the provisionally named Grand Theft Auto 4, primarily for the PS3. The round ends with only one team winning. Since they aren't working on a remake then this will most likely be Final Fantasy XIII. This equipment normally consists of one or two firearms and several grenades. Square Enix is however listed for a Final Fantasy game along with 70 other Japanese developers during TGS 2005.

Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously and each always starting with the equipment of their soldier class. Also shown at E3 was a video of Final Fantasy VII 's opening sequence remade in PlayStation 3 graphics, at the time recent to the show, Square Enix stated no plans for a remake. Unlike common first-person shooters, players are required to use iron sights for aiming to shoot more accurately. In the E3 2005 Press Conference, Sony showed some pre-rendered and some real-time videos of games in development with the codenames Eyedentify, Vision Gran Turismo and MotorStorm. Pacing is fast in the sense that players can be killed very quickly, but the players' movements are a lot slower and the gameplay contains fewer firefights than Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike, especially on larger maps. Some anticipated ones include Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Killzone PS3, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4, Shin Megami Tensei, Armored Core 4 , Unreal Tournament 2007 and Tekken 6. The game is a medium-paced tactical shooter, similar to the Tom Clancy series of shooters. Most developers have already announced games for the PS3.

Their opponents usually appear as non-uniformed people carrying Warsaw Pact weapons such as the AK-47. The actual number in development, though undeniably fewer, should still be very high. weapons such as the M16A2. As of October 2005, there are already over 150 PS3 games announced by multiple developers and publishers, like SCEA, Electronic Arts, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix and many others. soldiers carrying U.S. According to DevStation Conference, the PS3 will use the Cross Media Bar already used in the PlayStation Portable and PSX devices. The players on either team appear as U.S. Sony has appealed this decision and will be able to sell its products while the case is under appeal.

The players characters' are divided into two teams: usually an Assault group and a Defense one. Their downplays concerning a rumor suggesting Sony would unveil a revamped PS3 controller at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2006 were sound, as the controller was not shown in any form during the event. One of America's Army's unusual features is the design of the player's opponents. Though Sony itself had previously admitted at this past E3 that the controller design for their PlayStation 3 console was not finalized, GameSpot believes any purported changes will not be substantial. Army" or, on "Special Forces" maps, as Indigenous forces against an opposing enemy team. The PS3's specifications, and E3 display units, don't support DualShock controller ports. The main section of the game is the multiplayer part, in which players fight either as the "U.S. The number of ports to support such backward compatibility would most likely be limited to one, although this is also an unconfirmed rumour.

government agencies, including the Secret Service, resulting in the development of a training version, similar to the public version, which is for internal government use only. According to the Japanese video game publication Famitsu, Sony Computer Entertainment chief technical officer Masayuki Chatani said that the controller design is a "prototype, so there could be some small adjustments.". According to Colonel Wardynski the game generated interest from other U.S. However, some suggest that the controller, while a little un-traditional in contrast to the DualShock and DualShock 2 controllers, might provide adequate comfort for extended hours of play. The Xbox version was released in November, 2005. The design of the controller has been likened to a boomerang or a banana by many observers (or even less flattering likenesses). Army. SCEI's press release indicates that controller connectivity to the PlayStation 3 can be provided via:.

A different version of the game for Xbox and PlayStation 2, America's Army: Rise of a Soldier, is being developed by Ubisoft in collaboration with the U.S. Finally, whether the PS3's advantage in floating-point performance will be readily apparent in games depends entirely on whether developers are able to effectively make use of the system's unique architecture. After the game proved successful, the project was withdrawn from the Naval Postgraduate School due to allegations of mismanagement[6] in March 2004. Floating point calculations are very important for graphics, multimedia, and game physics, but considerably less important for other tasks like artificial intelligence. Army. It should also be noted that floating-point performance is a single-dimensional metric for comparing computers, and that many other considerations (including integer performance, memory size and bandwidth, etc.) determine the "overall" performance of a computer system. For not mentioning the contribution of the US Navy, there were tensions between the Naval Postgraduate School and the U.S. The floating-point capacity of the PS3 will significantly exceed that of the XBox 360, although it should be noted that Microsoft's console, due to its 3 symmetric fully featured processor cores (which are very similar to the Cell's PPE), may fare better on dynamically branching code, like that used for artificial intelligence.

In a booklet produced by the MOVES Institute, an article by Wagner James Au explains that "the Department of Defense want[ed] to double the number of Special Forces soldiers, so essential [had they proven] in Afghanistan and northern Iraq; consequently, orders [had] trickled down the chain of command and found application in the current release of America's Army."[5]. It should be noted that this figure is an estimate based on ideal, 100% efficient operation of the processor. On November 6, 2003, version 2.0 of America's Army was published, with the full title of America's Army: Special Forces. The seven SPEs in the PS3, in addition to the VMX unit in the PPE, would yield a total combined single-precision floating point performance of 218 GFLOPS (the same figure quoted by Sony). Army to be used for testing soldiers' skills. According to an in-depth report compiled by IBM, the theoretical peak performance of a single SPE is 25.6 GFLOPS. In 2003, Ubisoft 's commercial Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield was licensed by the U.S. Additionally, programmers may find it difficult, initially, to optimize their game engines to make the best use of the highly parallel architectures of both systems, further reducing real-world performance.

Army, was never released and has yet to show any signs of re-development. Inevitably, real-world performance for both systems will be lower. America's Army: Soldiers, which was a role-playing game in development stage that was to elucidate career paths in the U.S. The performance statistics given for the PS3 and XBox 360 in Sony's presentation were based on the theoretical maximum performance of the systems. The Army currently spends US $3 million a year to develop future versions of the game and US $1.5 million annually for server support. It was unclear how these numbers were exactly calculated, possibly based on addition of the floating point capabilities of the processing units in the Cell CPU and those of the RSX GPU. Army. The figures are likely rounded estimations.

The game was easily available, the gameplay was similar to Counter-Strike, and it had the then brand-new Unreal Engine as well as free servers sponsored by the U.S. In their official press release, the same statistic regarding the PS3 as a whole was reported to be over 2.1 TFLOPS. Distributed as a free download or CD it quickly became one of the ten most often-played online first-person shooters. The presentation shows that one PS3 Cell CPU alone is capable of 218 GFLOPS, compared to the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU's 115 GFLOPS. On July 4, 2002, the United States' Independence Day, the first version of America's Army, named Recon, was released after three years of development and production costs of US $7.5 million. In a slide show at their E3 conference, Sony presented the "CPU floating point capability" of the PlayStation 3's Cell CPU, and compared it to other CPUs. [4]. This gives the RSX an effective 48 GB/s when sending data to/from GPU and RAM.

According to Professor Zyda, the September 11, 2001 attacks had a positive effect on the future acceptance of the game. Since the RSX is connected to the XDR DRAM and GDDR3 RAM similar to a Turbo Cached GPU it can access both memory locations at the exact same time. In 2001 the Department of Defense licensed Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear from the French software company Ubisoft for training military personnel. NVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated during Sony's pre-show press conference at E3 2005 that the RSX will be more powerful than two GeForce 6800 Ultra video cards combined. Army to create the game. Custom RSX or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:. In May 2000, the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School was contracted by the U.S. The 8th SPE is there for redundancy: if one of the other 7 are defective the 8th SPE will activate and stand in for the defective part.

After convincing them of the project's cost-effectiveness Wardynski, who later became director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point and the head of the Army Game Project, began working with Professor Zyda. Only 7, however, are active. Army computer game to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Military Manpower. 3.2 GHz Cell processor with 8 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). Casey Wardynski, at that time an economics professor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, took the idea of an online U.S. ^[9]. Lieutenant Colonel E. According to a press release by Sony at the May 16, 2005 E3 Conference, the specifications of the PlayStation 3 are as follows.

Navy's Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to create a research centre to develop advanced military simulations. Please see the section entitled overall floating-point capability for more details on this. Army to provide US$45 million to the U.S. Real-world performance for both systems will naturally be less, and the specifications of the PS3 may undergo major changes before the system is launched. A report by Professor Zyda induced the U.S. These comparisons are based on estimates of theoretical maximum performance. The new slogan, "An Army Of One" was invented and used in numerous publicity efforts, such as the sponsorship of a NASCAR racing team. The amount of completely programmable floating point capacity afforded by the Cell microprocessor is higher than the Xbox 360's CPU, while the floating-point performance of the two systems' GPUs, which are designed specifically for graphics rendering tasks, are somewhat closer to parity.

Army's image. This comparison is based on the theoretical combined floating point capacity of the Cell microprocessor and the RSX GPU in the PS3 compared to the combined capacity of the Xenon CPU and Xenos GPU in the Xbox 360. The Department of Defense raised its spending for recruitment to more than US$2.2Bn, which not only paid for the Army Game Project, but also an entire promotional campaign to polish up the U.S. A simple comparison of the system architectures appears to indicate that the floating point capability of the PS3 is estimated to be greater than that of the Xbox 360. Army recruiting numbers had hit their lowest point in thirty years[3], and after two straight years of missed recruiting targets, the Congress of the United States decided to carry out "aggressive, innovative experiments" in military recruiting. The current nature of pricing in the video game industry is to sell the hardware at a loss, at least initially, and then recoup the losses from game sales and developer licensing. In 1999, U.S. Although manufacturing costs for Blu-Ray and the cell are unknown, it is safe to say like most new systems, they will lose money from the first year.

A 1997 report of the National Research Council, which Professor Michael Zyda was a member of[2], observed that Department of Defense's simulations were lagging behind commercial games and advised joint research with the entertainment industry. This means that buyers should be able to purchase a PlayStation 3 at a lower price than its actual manufacturing cost. Marine training and released to the public. $494) to make, not including labor, and they expect Sony to sell the PlayStation 3 for less than its manufacturing cost. The game was both used for U.S. Merrill Lynch Japan estimates the PS3 manufacturing costs at 54,000 yen (U.S. This was the first game funded and developed by both the Department of Defense and the commercial game industry. An Inquirer article details internal Sony development[8].

Marine Corps to contract with MÄK Technologies for the development of Marine Expeditionary Unit 2000 the following year. It is likely that standalone players will be released prior to PS3. The success of Marine Doom led the U.S. Sony Blu-Ray standalone players are to be released early summer^[7]. Marine simulation experts created Marine Doom, a modification of the commercial game Doom II as a tactical training tool. Sony office press releases indicate a 2006^[6] launch. Marines, U.S. ¥12,500 for the Super Famicom).

Although the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) has had plans for using video games since the early 1980s, it was not until 1996, shortly after computer-based wargames were permitted on government computers for U.S. In the same magazine, Ken Kutaragi was interviewed, and expressed little concern over the PS3's possibly high launch price, believing that customers would be willing to pay extra for a superior product, as they had in the past for the original PlayStation (¥39,800 vs. By comparison, under the same counting conditions the most often played online game, Counter-Strike, has between 70,000 and 100,000 players.[1]. In contrast Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, says the PS3 will not be expensive and that it will be competitively priced against the Xbox 360.^[5]. Statistics show that the game has had an average of roughly 3,000 to 6,000 players playing online at any one time between 2002 and 2005 and thus ranking in the ten most played online games tracked by GameSpy. So we're going to have to do our best [in containing the price]". A counter on the homepage of the PC version claims over six million registered accounts as of 2005 which is often confused with the number of players. "But we're aiming for consumers throughout the world.

The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to," said Kutaragi to a mostly Japanese crowd. America's Army is the first computer and video game to make recruitment an explicit goal and the first well-known overt use of computer gaming for political aims. The system's retail price is not known.^[3][4] Sony Computer Entertainment president and "father of the PlayStation" Ken Kutaragi points out "It'll be expensive" and "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. The game is relatively authentic in terms of visual and acoustic representation of combat —especially pertaining to weaponry—but its critics have alleged that it fails to convey wartime conditions as accurately as it claims. A functional version of the console was not at E3 or the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although some demonstrations were held on devkits and videos of soon-to-be released games created to run on systems with the same specs as the PS3 were presented, such as Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 3. Professor Michael Zyda, the director and founder of the MOVES Institute, acknowledged Counter-Strike as the model for America's Army. The PS3 was officially unveiled on May 16, 2005 by Sony during the E3 conference, where the console was first shown to the public.

The gameplay is similar to that of Counter-Strike, a Half-Life modification and the most widely played online first-person shooter at the time and for the past few years. . Army recruiting centers. At the moment, little more is known in public about the PS3 apart from its hardware specifications and reports that it will be based on open APIs for game development. The PC version can be found as a download on the Internet or as free CDs at U.S. Sony has announced that the PS3 will be backward compatible with earlier PS1 and PS2 games. America's Army has been developed since 2000 and still changes through add-ons and patches. Specifically, Sony representatives have informed video game store clerks to expect a North American shipment in the summer of 2006, also quoted as "somewhere between June and September." It is the successor to the PlayStation 2 and will mainly compete against the Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 360.

The game falls into the subgenres of an advergame, serious game and militainment. The PlayStation 3 is slated for release this year^[2]. . The PlayStation 3 (PS3) (Japanese: プレイステーション3) is Sony's seventh generation era video game console in the market-leading PlayStation series. Army, Ubisoft and Secret Level. ^[16]. Rise of a Soldier is the subtitle for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 version that was developed by the U.S. IPv6, the next generation of the Internet Protocol.

It has been developed by the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School and uses the Unreal engine. Kynogon's Kynapse 4.0 (PDF) "large scale A.I.". tax dollars and distributed for free. that aims to produce high-quality virtual foliage in real time. It is financed through U.S. SpeedTree RT, a programming package produced by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. The PC version was released on July 4, 2002 subtitled Recon, Operations and currently Special Forces. Cg, Nvidia's C-like shading language.

Army recruitment. Alias Systems Corporation's 3D graphics programs [15]. Army and help with U.S. Pixelux's Game Asset Synthesis Technology [14], a toolkit for advanced procedural synthesis. government and released as a global public relations initiative to present an image of the current U.S. Havok's physics and animation engines. America's Army (also known as AA or Army Game Project) is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter owned by the U.S. Epic's Unreal engine 3.0 framework.

2.6 (AA:SF Link-Up) - February 9, 2006. Ageia's PhysX SDK, NovodeX. Xbox (AA:Rise of a Soldier) - Nov 16, 2005. OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. 2.5 (AA:SF Direct Action) - October 13, 2005. OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations. 2.4 (AA:SF Q-Course) - May 16, 2005. OpenGL ES 2.0, the embedded version of the popular OpenGL graphics API.

2.3 (AA:SF Firefight) - February 18, 2005. COLLADA, an open, XML-based file format for 3D models. 2.2.1 (AA:SF Vanguard) - Nov 18, 2004. The Ability to Have 7 Controllers at Once. 2.2.0 (AA:SF Vanguard) - October 19, 2004. Parental Controls. 2.1 (AA:SF Downrange) - June 1, 2004. Hub/Home Ethernet Gaming Network.

2.0a (AA:SF) - December 21, 2003. Simultaneous World Wide Web access and gameplay. 2.0 (AA:Special Forces) - Nov 6, 2003. MP3 and ATRAC download and playback. 1.9 (AA:O) - August 8, 2003. Digital photograph display (JPEG). 1.7 (AA:O) - April 21, 2003. EyeToy virtual object manipulation.

1.6 (AA:O) - March 16, 2003. EyeToy voice command recognition. 1.5 (AA:O) - December 23, 2002. EyeToy interactive reality game. 1.4 (AA:O) - November 15, 2002. High-definition IP video conferencing. 1.3 (AA:O) - October 10, 2002. Two simultaneous High-definition television streams for use on a title screen for a HD Blu-ray Movie.

1.2.1 (AA:O) - October 3, 2002. The ability for the PlayStation Portable to connect to the PlayStation 3 as a video-enabled controller. 1.2.0 (AA:O) - August 22, 2002. Bluetooth 2.0 (up to 7 controllers). 1.1.1 (AA:O) - August 1, 2002. USB 2.0 (wired). 1.0.1b (AA:O) - July 25, 2002. TCP/IP networking (wired ethernet).

1.0.1 (AA: Operations) - July 12, 2002. Integrated for mesh networking and connectivity with the PlayStation Portable. 1.0 (AA: Recon) - July 4, 2002. 802.11g Wi-Fi. USB 2.0 (four front and two rear ports). Bluetooth 2.0.

IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi. Three Gigabit Ethernet ports (Sony has indicated that because of cost reduction there is a possibility that the PlayStation 3 may act only as an accessory interface and hub and perhaps not as a router, as originally planned.)^[11]. 32 cm (L) x 24 cm (W) x 8 cm (H)^[10]. SD/MMC slot.

CompactFlash Type I and II slot. Memory Stick standard/Duo and standard/mini slots. Optional but not required for most games. Detachable 2.5" hard drive with Linux pre-installed.

CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD. DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE, BD-RW. Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor).

Multiple analog outputs (Composite, S-Video, Component video). S/PDIF optical output for digital audio. Two HDMI (Type A) outputs (Dual-screen HD outputs). Supported screen sizes: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p.

76.8 GB/s Cell FlexIO Bus (44.8 GB/s outbound, 32 GB/s inbound). 204.8 GB/s Cell EIB. 5 GB/s System Bus (Aggregated 2.5 GB/s upstream and downstream). 35 GB/s GPU to CPU (Aggregated 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)).

22.4 GB/s GPU to GDDR-3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge). 25.6 GB/s GPU to XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz. 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz. 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz).

128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging. 33 billion dot products per second (51 billion dot products with CPU). 74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU). 136 shader operations per clock.

Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines. Full high definition output (up to 1080p) x 2 channels. 1.8 TFLOPS (trillion floating point operations per second). Clocked at 550 MHz.