More on PS3 from Phil Harrison

In a recent interview with Sony’s Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison, more interesting info about the PS3 SKU differences, the new controller design, and the PSP/PS3 functionality surfaced.

Perhaps the biggest confusion that emerged during the official announcement of the PlayStation 3 is the difference between the 60GB and 20GB models. The main difference between the two SKUs, as we have already mentioned, is the lack of the HDMI output in the 20GB PS3. The presence of additional memory card slots on the 60GB PS3 also differentiates the two, but Harrison says this does not make the 20GB model a lesser choice. “[The] 20 GB machine has USB ports so you can get all the functionality with external devices.”

Discarding the boomerang design, Sony revealed a PS3 controller that resembles the PS2’s Dual Shock controller. He said that this was to be expected, because, according to him, when Sony announced the boomerang controller last year “every photograph showed the comment ‘This is a design concept subject to change.’” It was never meant to be a final concept. He reveals that since 1994, the controller design R&D group in Japan always had hundreds of design concepts and “[the boomerang] is just one of them”.

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In a recent interview with Sony’s Worldwide Studios President Phil Harrison, more interesting info about the PS3 SKU differences, the new controller design, and the PSP/PS3 functionality surfaced.

Perhaps the biggest confusion that emerged during the official announcement of the PlayStation 3 is the difference between the 60GB and 20GB models. The main difference between the two SKUs, as we have already mentioned, is the lack of the HDMI output in the 20GB PS3. The presence of additional memory card slots on the 60GB PS3 also differentiates the two, but Harrison says this does not make the 20GB model a lesser choice. “[The] 20 GB machine has USB ports so you can get all the functionality with external devices.”

Discarding the boomerang design, Sony revealed a PS3 controller that resembles the PS2’s Dual Shock controller. He said that this was to be expected, because, according to him, when Sony announced the boomerang controller last year “every photograph showed the comment ‘This is a design concept subject to change.’” It was never meant to be a final concept. He reveals that since 1994, the controller design R&D group in Japan always had hundreds of design concepts and “[the boomerang] is just one of them”.

With rumors that the PS3 ‘motion sensor’ is a copy of the Wiimote, Harrison answers, “[The] R&D group in Japan is constantly looking at innovation in both useability, technology, and various other sensing devices and what happens is they will invent something or plan something but it can’t be built because of cost reasons or supply reasons…. I think what happened was the evolution of sensing technology was getting high enough volume in manufacture and low enough in price that we could adopt it in our controller. Now clearly we were not the only ones who thought this at the same time. But that’s fine. That’s natural.”

Harrison is confident that the PS3 controller will be a bigger hit than the Wiimote. As he pointed out, the PS2 controller has become an industry standard as opposed to the new design being introduced by Nintendo. “There’s like 370 million [PlayStation controllers] around the world so that by maintaining the primary man-machine interface as something that is very familiar we have a lot of benefits to the gameplay because not only do you have the controller you’re familiar with but now have additional motion.”

Just like the PSP, the PS3 will be continually upgraded to new features, functionalities, and capabilities. Now here’s something Sony fans will love to hear. The PSP and PS3 will be interloped both at the content and application levels. Harrison reveals, “That was not intended to be a gimmick, but a feature we will add to the PS3 version so that when you play the PS3 version you can gameshare from the PS3 to the PSP the program required to do that. That will be a free of charge component that we ship on the PS3.”

Of course, since we’re getting all the info from a Sony insider, it’s either he’s speaking the truth or exaggerating. I can’t wait till the PS3 ships out so I can judge things for myself. What do you think?