Picture this: you plug your TV into a box the size of a phone book and go online to check headlines. You get bored and click over to a Giants game. Later you download Casablanca, play Metal Gear Solid against an opponent in Seoul, then chat with a friend in Seattle. What sort of box is this? It could be a PC, but Sony (SNE ) hopes it will be a PlayStation 3, the video game console it plans to introduce this spring.

 

Six years in the making, the PS3 is a crucial component of Sony's strategy to dominate the digital home with a full lineup of super-sharp TVs and other gear. To attract teens and parents alike, the console plays high-definition games and movies from Blu-ray DVDs. It boasts a huge hard disk to store photos, music, and TV shows. And it can connect to the Net for play against far-flung rivals, while a new multimedia chip called "the Cell" -- developed by Sony, IBM (IBM ), and Toshiba (TOSBF ) at a cost of $400 million -- juggles the workload (see BW Online, 2/08/06, "The Cell Chip's Other Life").

 

TOO LOADED?  If that seems like a lot to pack in, it is. But there's a lot at stake. Sony is banking on the console to lift its consumer-electronics division out of trouble, and the Blu-ray drive is expected to give a boost to that Sony-backed format, one of two competing to become the next-generation standard for videos. "PS3 is very important for us," says Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda. "There are so many key devices from the electronics group that will go into it."   [ more... ]