In response to Microsoft's successful Xbox Live network, Sony announced a unified online service for the PlayStation 3 console at the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing meeting in Tokyo. The name of the service has been given the working title of "PlayStation Network Platform" and Sony has confirmed that the service will be free and include multiplayer support. However developers are permitted to charge a subscription fee, as is common with MMO games. It is being jointly developed by Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Online Entertainment.

Interface and operating system

It has been confirmed that Linux will be pre-installed on the PS3 hard drive. Sony hopes that with its wide variety of features, PS3 will supplant the PC in the home. In addition, Sony hopes that the presence of Linux in every PS3 will encourage independent content creation such as homebrew games.

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Currently it is unknown if Linux will be the operating system used to run everything, including the Cross Media Bar, or if the system will operate as a dual boot environment, where Linux would be loaded from the Cross Media Bar menu.

Hardware specifications

Central processing unit (CPU)

Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield. If one of the eight has a manufacturing defect, it is disabled without rendering the entire unit defective. Additionally, one of the seven active SPEs is reserved for use by the system's OS, leaving six SPEs directly available to applications.

Graphics processing unit (GPU)

Custom RSX or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:

• Based on NVIDIA NV47 architecture
• Clocked at 550 MHz
• 128-bit DDR memory interface
• 211.2 GFLOPS programmable (384 FLOPS per clock)
• 1.8 TFLOPS
• Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
• 136 shader operations per clock
• 74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU)
• 24 2D texture lookups per clock
• 1.1 billion vertices per second
• 128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging
• Full high definition output (up to and including 1080p)

Memory

• 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz)
• 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz

System bandwidth

• 204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)
• Cell FlexIO Bus: 35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5 GHz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)
• 51.2 GB/s SPE to local store

• Experimental Sustained bandwidth for some SPE-to-SPE DMA transfers - 78 to 197 GB/s.
• 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz / 8 bits to a byte
• 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) / 8 bits to a byte
• RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
• System Bus (separate from XIO controller) 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read

Audio/video output

Video

• Supported screen resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
• Multiple AV outputs
  • Composite
  • S-Video
  • Component video (output up to and including 1080p)
  • HDMI 1.3http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9825 port (Digital video output; 60 GB model only)

Sound

• S/PDIF optical output for digital audio up to 7.1 sound
• Dolby TrueHDhttp://www.scee.presscentre.com/imagelibrary/detail.asp?MediaDetailsID=29079 (Blu-Ray movies only ; compatible sound equipment required )
• DTS-HD
• LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor)

Storage

• Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-R, BD-RE. 2x (9.0 MB/s)
• DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW. 8x (11.0 MB/s max)
• CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW. 24x (3.5 MB/s max)
• SACD: SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD. 2x
• Hard Drive: Pre-Installed 20 GB / 60 GB (depending on package), 2.5", detachable/upgradeable, with Linux pre-installed.
  
• Flash memory interfaces (60 GB model only):
  • Memory Stick
  • CompactFlash
  • SD/MMC

Communications

• One Gigabit Ethernet Port
• USB 2.0 (x4)
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Wi-Fi (60 GB model only)
  • IEEE 802.11b/g

Controller

The PlayStation 3 controller features a USB mini-B connector terminal at the top of the controller for charging the internal battery through USB, and also for wired play. There are four numbered LED indicators, to identify and distinguish multiple connected wireless controllers.

In addition to the basic design, the other major feature revealed at the press conference was the ability to sense both rotational orientation and translational acceleration. Although it is not yet known how many games will use this feature, games that do (such as Warhawk) will come with an option to turn motion sensing off.

Sony has stated that because of the motion sensors, the rumble capability of the previous controllers will not be included, reasoning that the vibration interferes with motion-sensing. Haptics developer Immersion Corporation (which successfully sued Sony) expressed skepticism of Sony's rationale, and has since introduced tilt and motion-sensing which filters out vibration in software.

Some minor refinements have also been made to the controller. In place of the "Analog" button and light found on previous PlayStation controllers, a button with the PlayStation logo has been added to the center of the controller face. Some of the buttons have been raised from their previous versions, to enhance their pressure-sensitive analogue functionality. In particular, the L2 and R2 shoulder buttons have been redesigned to allow for a much deeper depression range, making them more trigger like. The analogue sticks also have a wider range of motion and finer analogue sensitivity—at 10-bit accuracy, an improvement upon the 8-bit accuracy of the previous models.

Power supply and other components

The power supply will be built into the console. A standard 3-pin IEC connector is present at the base of the console.

In an interview Ken Kutaragi revealed that the PlayStation 3 will be cooled using heat pipes and associated technology and that a liquid cooling system would not be used.

Overall floating-point capability