Over on technology Blog, keen PS3 watcher Jack Schofield has posted about how across-the-board delays in the launch of Blu-ray players may place the current launch date of PS3 in doubt. Rumours appearing on the US blog Kotaku suggesting that beta machines have still not been produced have also added fuel to the fire (an apt metaphor in this case - Kotaku's mole claims that the hardware is failing to dissipate heat).
Jack believes Sony has made two key mistakes with its next-gen machine: being too ambitious with the specs (Cell processor, seven SPE chips, etc), and using the machine as a Blu-ray Trojan horse too early in the lifespan of the high-def format. PlayStation 2 was useful as a DVD platform, but that console arrived four years after the launch of the DVD medium.
Meanwhile, Ken Kutaragi is still spelling out his vision for the machine. In an interview with Japanese website PC Watch (more info here) he admires the way in which Apple products take on a central role in their users' lives (and is a tad jealous about the price tag Steve Jobs can slap on his technology). Kutaragi apparently wants PS3 to form its own living room 'ecosystem' - i.e. to fulfil a central, all-encompassing role in the living room. Well, that's certainly a refreshing alternative to the hateful term 'entertainment server'. Although I'm still partial to 'games console'.
More recently, he has been speaking to the NikkeiBP newspaper (more here), declaring that, "the world has obviously underestimated our progress in software development" - a reference to the large number of games in development for PS3. He also chats about the possibilities offered by the Eye-Toy camera, and mentions that PS3 users will be able to upgrade their hard-drives in a year or so to a meaty 120GB. 'PlayStation 3 is a computer' is his consistent message.
The soap opera rolls on toward a far from predictable conclusion. But, at the moment, the lack of sustained developer backbiting about PS3 suggests that the real hot air is coming from the web rather than the machine itself.
