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[edbrat]

Chris Deering is a legend.

I would fucking love to work with a guy like that.

Chris Deering is indeed a total fucking legend and a giant of the European games business, still amazed at how much respect he commands. Best thing that article does is convey just how nice, fun and sharp he is.

 

[jvm]

Are people really disputing that Sony promised Toy Story graphics? Just wondering, because this is a classic piece on CNN that I keep going back to for laughs (March 1999):
http://money.cnn.com/1999/03/01/life/playstation/

PlayStation 2, though, is claiming to be able to handle 50 times more 3-D image data than the Dreamcast, allowing it to create characters similar in appearance to those in the Walt Disney film "Toy Story."

This one is also fun, from Jan 2000:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/01/20/sony.online.idg/index.html

In the future, SCEI plans to make PlayStation.com Japan a central part of its plans to deliver digital content via high-speed lines to PlayStation 2 owners. More than just a games console, the PlayStation 2 will offer support for DVD Video, be able to function as a set-top box Internet access device and also feature a PC-Card interface through which it can be connected to broadband networks.

 

[leroy hacker]

I think they're mixing it with this:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-250632.html

Nope, promises about Toy Story graphics on the PS2 were made, though the incident you cited is frequently illogically cited as evidence that they weren't. Anyway, the person being quoted was in Sony PR. I doubt he'd mix up a claim he made with something his competitors said.

I'm surprised none of the pre-launch hype about the PS2's online plans were mentioned in the article since that was even more purely fictional.

 

[gofreak]

Are people really disputing that Sony promised Toy Story graphics? Just wondering, because this is a classic piece on CNN that I keep going back to for laughs (March 1999):
http://money.cnn.com/1999/03/01/life/playstation/

I think the only reason it keeps being disputed is because no one can pin down a quote from Sony on it.

I know Deering makes reference to it here, but the whole Toy Story/PS2 thing took on such a life of its own that it wouldn't surprise me if his own memory is murky on the matter. If people say something enough they start to think it's true, and it seems like everyone thinks Sony did say that - but trace back to the sources of it, and it becomes a bit less clear about how that started.

(Don't get me wrong, personally I wouldn't be surprised at all if that DID in fact originate with Sony itself or some Sony PR person in conversation with journalists, but I'm just saying the lack of apparent proof is why it was a controversial point )

 

[jvm]

(Don't get me wrong, personally I wouldn't be surprised at all if that DID in fact originate with Sony itself or some Sony PR person in conversation with journalists, but I'm just saying the lack of apparent proof is why it was a controversial point )

Yeah, you're right. I just think that's its terribly unlikely that any journalist said "wow, these hardware specs should be able to do Toy Story graphics, no problem!" You know that line came from a Sony person somewhere. :lol

 

[[Nintex]]

Interesting article, kinda reminds me of what is wrong with many gaming companies today. They had visionaries and creative minds working together with a clear goal in mind, not a bunch of replacable suits trying to clear a checklist before the next fiscal year starts.

 

[charlequin]

Interesting article, kinda reminds me of what is wrong with many gaming companies today. They had visionaries and creative minds working together with a clear goal in mind, not a bunch of replacable suits trying to clear a checklist before the next fiscal year starts.

A visionary with a clear goal destroyed Sony's seemingly unassailable lead in the console business and cost them billions of dollars, while a bunch of replaceable suits salvaged the system and actually made it desirable for people to buy. It's never really that simple.

 

[Dunlop]

Awesome read, I regret having never owned a PS2, which is probably the only console I have not owned at one point or another since the Atari 2600.

I was on a anti Sony vindetta for my perceived injustices to my beloved Dreamcast

Played a lot at other people's houses though

 

[Dead Man Typing]

A visionary with a clear goal destroyed Sony's seemingly unassailable lead in the console business and cost them billions of dollars, while a bunch of replaceable suits salvaged the system and actually made it desirable for people to buy. It's never really that simple.

I think the vision in question was so far out there that the suits called him crazy and ripped his vision apart to make some bastardised version of his true intention.

I still believe that Kutaragi wanted to make the PS3 the $1000 console and have it do everything that he promised at E3 2005. The suits got scared and started ripping out features to get the price down and sent Ken off to pasture.

I'm not saying the $1000 console would have been more successful than the $599, but it would have been truer to Kuturagi's vision. He wanted people to stop looking at the Playstation as a toy, and at $1000, no one would think that was any kind of toy. It would be an appliance as important to any house hold as a fridge or a cooker.

Maybe they were right to reel him in. Well at least Blu-Ray won that war, so whatever sacrifices they made, seem to have worked out for them in the long run.

 

[gofreak]

I think the vision in question was so far out there that the suits called him crazy and ripped his vision apart to make some bastardised version of his true intention.

I still believe that Kutaragi wanted to make the PS3 the $1000 console and have it do everything that he promised at E3 2005. The suits got scared and started ripping out features to get the price down and sent Ken off to pasture.

I'm not saying the $1000 console would have been more successful than the $599, but it would have been truer to Kuturagi's vision. He wanted people to stop looking at the Playstation as a toy, and at $1000, no one would think that was any kind of toy. It would be an appliance as important to any house hold as a fridge or a cooker.

Maybe they were right to reel him in. Well at least Blu-Ray won that war, so whatever sacrifices they made, seem to have worked out for them in the long run.

His E3 05 'vision' survived pretty much intact. I don't think a couple more USB ports, another HDMI port and a ethernet switch would have suddenly added $400 to the RRP... they were probably cut because they didn't pass a closer cost-benefit analysis (perhaps in particular vs the cost/benefit of a HDD in every box, for example - that point was still up for debate for quite some time after E3 05). But those things probably didn't make a huge difference to manufacturing cost. If you believe some, PS3 as it emerged was a $1000+ machine, at least for Sony...or not far off it.

I think the challenge they were facing became pretty quickly apparent though. I'd say questions were being asked internally some time before the launch, about the cost of the device the necessity for this cost, but Sony had a war to win with Blu-ray, and things at that stage were probably too far gone to effect much change on a product level. Of course, it's never too late to effect changes at a personnel level...

 

[SturokBGD]

Good read.

To this day I still consider the PS2 to have been an over-priced, under-powered piece of shit on release (spoken like a true PC gamer and Sega Dreamcast fan, ha), it's amazing to see what it went on to become.

It really does go to show you the power of a software library, everything else is irrelevant.

 

[camineet]

Didn't Nintendo win with the NES and SNES?

Technically yes. the NES thrashed the SMS and the SNES did beat the Genesis in raw numbers but the thing is, SEGA nearly cut Nintendo's marketshare effectively in HALF during the Genesis/SNES war, so that was a "loss" for Nintendo.

 

[camineet]

Sony NEVER said PS2 would do "Toy Story" graphics. That was an Xbox thing.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

The PS2 is still far and away the best system out there.

 

[camineet]

Early rumblings on PS2 in 1998, with CRAZY claims from Ken that were more insane than those for PS3!

Early PlayStation 2 Rumblings
Answers to the most frequently asked questions about PlayStation 2.
October 2, 1998
by Douglass C. Perry


The next big thing for PlayStation fans may or may not be Sega's Dreamcast. Die-hard gamers play games on any console, but dyed-in-the-wool PlayStation loyalists will have no such Sega nonsense. Dreamcast? Forgeddabouttit. PlayStation 2, baby, that's what it's about.

Here is what we know about PlayStation 2 (or whatever it's called). (We will update this as often as possible.)

Is the PlayStation 2 backward compatible?
The latest rumor has it that the PlayStation 2 is backward compatible. The same main chip or CPU that's on the PlayStation, the MIPS R3000, is believed to appear somewhere on the PlayStation 2, opening up the possibility of it being backward compatible. No fact has substantiated this rumor; expect that the long-running UK magazine C&VG in September printed an article that this was in fact the case. C&VG's credibility is solid, and the following issue may have the facts to back it up! Let's hope so.

Will the PlayStation 2 be more powerful than Sega's Dreamcast?
An article we wrote about two months ago said it best. During an interview with engineering trade publication EE Times in July (1998), SCEA Chief Ken Kutaragi laid bare his feelings on conventional, polygon-centric architectures -- such as that proposed for Sega's forthcoming Dreamcast console.

"Graphics-chip vendors in Silicon Valley today are all doing the same thing. They are obsessed with the polygon race. Their Research and Development goals are so near-sighted that they are only paying attention to gradual changes in graphics technologies that can be developed in lockstep with the short-term PC product-development cycle," said Kutaragi.

Does this mean we can anticipate PlayStation 2 (or whatever it's eventually dubbed) to signal the dawn of a new era in visual quality? That appears to be the goal.

According to Kutaragi, "Today's videogame graphics look like computer graphics. Our goal is to achieve a film-like graphics quality that won't make viewers conscious of or annoyed by the fact that they are indeed looking at computer graphics.. And for that to happen, it will take a major re-thinking of how visuals are produced. One that may very well mean and end to the polygon."

Whether that means Sony will use Voxels -- 3D pixels, or something more powerful, is still unknown. But it certainly means that Sony is working on making the PlayStation more of a long-term console that's not PC-based and that looks better than any PC available to date.

When Will it Come Out?
Recent rumors point to April 1999. We don't believe it. Since the PlayStation 2 hasn't neared completion, there are no tech specs to speak of just yet. Without tech specs, developers can't make games. Games take at least one year to develop on average, and so that leads us to believe the PlayStation 2 could arrive at earliest in the year 2000.

What games will come out for PlayStation 2?
That's a good question. No one knows just yet. A few Ubi Soft titles are believed to appear, such as D-Jump, and Rayman 3 and 4 may also appear. Namco's Tekken 4 is believed to be coming to PSX 2, but it's also widely speculated that it could appear on Dreamcast, the console of Namco's long-time rival, Sega.

Will the PlayStation 2 use DVD?
No. All rumors and facts point to the PlayStation using the more affordable, more widely used CD-ROM, or a larger-capacity proprietary format not unlike the one Sega has chosen for its upcoming Dreamcast console.

What is the console's real name?
There isn't one just yet. For now the most obvious name is PlayStation 2, because Sony has said not one official word about it. So, PlayStation 2 is a working name. Another name that's been bandied around is T-Rex. Again, Sony has confirmed nothing.

Will the PlayStation 2 be difficult to program for?
As far as we know, it will as difficult as the Dreamcast to develop for, but not so difficult or as annoying as, say, Sega's Saturn was.

http://ps2.ign.com/articles/072/072965p1.html


So Ken Kutaragi was claiming that PS2 would do "film like" visuals, that's beyond even what CG can do!!!! :lol

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Awesome read, I regret having never owned a PS2, which is probably the only console I have not owned at one point or another since the Atari 2600.

I was on a anti Sony vindetta for my perceived injustices to my beloved Dreamcast

Played a lot at other people's houses though

You missed the best console of all time, my friend.

Not having a PS2 is on par with not having a SNES, or a gaming PC in the 90s.

 

[Augemitbutter]

The PS2 is still far and away the best system out there.

the gaming library is out of this world.

 

[shuri]

People were eating this tripe up back then :lol

 

[lochnesssnowman]

In my very first week employed in the industry I got to head to London for one of the SCEE launch parties - the studio had contributed to one of their internally developed games and everyone went along. I'd only just finished university - was pretty amazing

Met Phil Harrison and saw him sing something from Singstar Party on stage - I think it was Aha - Take on Me.

Studio then had it's own party for the launch, followed by the Christmas party shortly afterwards. Three parties in two weeks I think. That breakneck pace has not quite sustained itself

 

[Green Biker Dude]

The PS2 is still far and away the best system out there.

and looking at the way things have gone ever since the ps2 died, i don't think that's ever going to change. rip gaming

 

[Blablurn]

the article makes me almost want to buy a fat PS2 just to have it as a memory.

 

[leroy hacker]

Sony NEVER said PS2 would do "Toy Story" graphics. That was an Xbox thing.

Did you notice that the article quoted a Sony guy saying that they'd said it? Why do you think he would lie about that?

 

[Blablurn]

What is the console's real name?
There isn't one just yet. For now the most obvious name is PlayStation 2, because Sony has said not one official word about it. So, PlayStation 2 is a working name. Another name that's been bandied around is T-Rex. Again, Sony has confirmed nothing.

:lol :lol

 

[Chris_C]

I read it yesterday on the subway. It's a great read. Is it just me or is Eurogamer the only ones doing these kind of in-depth articles nowadays?

1up does stuff like that occasionally, but not as often as they used to.

 

[CosmicGroinPull]

Wait what?

Mainly, they're selling more 360s

Didn't you know that the Wii doesn't count?

Exactly... :lol

Sounds like he is referring to third party games, in which case he is right.

Yeah, what he said.

 

[Prime crotch]

Sony NEVER said PS2 would do "Toy Story" graphics. That was an Xbox thing.

Yes they did, around the same time they showed the rubber duck demo or that FF8 ball tech demo, were it today the joke would be real time partner change.
This was way before the Xbox was even a thing to the public eye.

 

[Chrange]

I think they're mixing it with this:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-250632.html

Just looking at it, that quote could be saying that the Xbox actually will deliver what the PS2 promised.

I mean you have a Sony guy saying they said it...people still don't believe?

 

[Freshmaker]

Well it ended up doing NURBS and the etc., 2 out of 3 isn't so bad

No, that's not what I meant. They believed that the PS2 would be based around NURBS or ray tracing and not use other kinds of polygons at all.

Next Gen was suggesting that Sony was going pure voxel. :lol

 

[Dark Octave]

Games that look like Toy Story? Wow, someone didn't look at the specs of the PS2. :lol

That Final Fantasy VIII ballroom demo wasn't too shabby though.

 

[camineet]

I'm sure PS3 and 360 could handle that FFVIII ballroom dance scene, like the CG version, in realtime, nearly 100% the same. The PS2 version was vastly downgraded version with only two models and nowhere near the visual complexity or quality of the CG, but today's HD consoles could handle it....I'm just thinking of RE5's realtime cut-scenes, yeah it could be done.

 

[Chris_C]

Yes they did, around the same time they showed the rubber duck demo or that FF8 ball tech demo, were it today the joke would be real time partner change.
This was way before the Xbox was even a thing to the public eye.

Like Gofreak said, this is a misunderstanding, Sony never publicly stated the PS2 would do Toy Story level graphics, they said a lot of other crap, but never this.

 

[camineet]

Yes they did, around the same time they showed the rubber duck demo or that FF8 ball tech demo, were it today the joke would be real time partner change.
This was way before the Xbox was even a thing to the public eye.

Okay I suppose I may have been wrong. I just remember alot of other things said about PS2 capabilities in regard to CG-like graphics and film-like graphics.

edit: whatever was said about PS2 doing Toy Story graphics was not from Sony themselves, but by the gaming press and regular press.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

"We got away with a hell of a lot," he admits. "At E3 we'd promised the world, basically. We'd promised games that would look like Toy Story. The games we delivered at launch, as with any platform... Not so much."

"I don't think, looking at the launch line-up, you would have extrapolated 148 million sales. It was a mixed bag. There was nothing there that you would have said was completely changing the way games were played.

Dreamcast didn't deserve to go out like it did grumble grumble

 

[leroy hacker]

edit: whatever was said about PS2 doing Toy Story graphics was not from Sony themselves, but by the gaming press and regular press.

Why are you so absolutely certain that no one at Sony ever said it that when someone from Sony says "We'd promised games that would look like Toy Story" your assumption is that he rather than you must be wrong?

And what is your explanation for why so many PS2 hype articles mentioned Toy Story graphics and a Sony PR person himself said he promised Toy Story graphics, if Sony themselves never mentioned Toy Story graphics? Why do you think he is lying?

 

[EmCeeGramr]

I don't know which is funnier in retrospect: Sony's insane PS2 claims about being 50 times more powerful than the Dreamcast and how their hype played a huge part in sinking the DC and Sega, or how Gaming Age and other message boards were convinced that the PS2's jaggies would have a significant impact on sales.

 

[BocoDragon]

I think it's really unfair to judge the "Toy Story-level graphics" comments in 2010. At the time, it might as well have been.

Toy Story was shorthand for "CG film" in those days. It came out in 1996, so by 2000 it would have still been the touchstone of CG animation. The actual resolution and polygonal detail of Toy Story isn't so much the point, as it is the overall effect of a detailed CG film.. with its character models who can be animated around a large stage, and have faces detailed enough to emote.

Up until then with PS1, N64 etc, we had 3D, but we were used to seeing everything as a jagged, abstract mess. PS2 really did bring detailed-enough characters (and environments) that the characters could now emote and be staged just like a CG film. Look at FFX and MGS2. Technically they might not have been as high res as even the earlier Pixar blockbusters, but it really was close enough to that effect that it doesn't matter (even today IMO... and especially a decade ago).

Now the Dreamcast might have been able to pull of "Toy Story-graphics" in such a sense too... but PS2 seemed to be better geared to pulling off real time animation sequences with detailed character models... and you can't expect Sony to acknowlege their competition anyway! :lol

So I never thought this comment was "crazy". More that as time goes on, we are less likely to understand how such a comment would have been understood in its day. Now all we can do is compare the poly count of PS2 (which looks like a jagged mess now) and Toy Story (which being a film, still looks decent enough), and laugh.

 

[TestMonkey]

According to Harrison, the parties were part of a strategy to keep employees motivated and proud to work for PlayStation. "When times are good it's important to share that good feeling with the staff," he says.

"It did get a little bit out of control at one point, when we were doing launch parties for games pretty much every month. So we cut back on that. Not necessarily for financial reasons, more... Health."

Yeah providing open bar events to development teams is usually not the best idea. Invite QA and you have a recipe for great times or disaster or both.

 

[BocoDragon]

"I think it can sell as many as PS2, maybe more," says Deering. "In the case of both PS1 and PS2, we sold more Slim units than original models. The PS3 Slim has only been out a couple of years.

Really? Now I can imagine that PS2 slim sold more than PS2 phat. It came on store shelves in 2004 and it's STILL on store shelves in 2010.

But PSone selling more than PS1? I'm surprised. PSone launched in 2000, nearly at the same time as PS2. The PS1 boom was done, I'd think. I'd be very surprised if PSone sold more than the original model.

 

[shuri]

I believe it was Ken who said that the ps2 online support was going to be like jacking into the Matrix, and George Lucas had some delicious quote about how he wished he had access to the ps2 while he was working on episode 1 and hwo better the cgi would had looked.. :lol

 

[dankir]

Phil Harrison & Peter Moore, those were the good times...

Man those were many moons ago.........great article though.

 

[camineet]

Somewhat off-topic: Today's high-end PC components have enough power to rival the short CG films, commercials of the 1980s and early 1990s. Maybe not Toy Story yet, but we ARE getting their. I mean we already have beyond PS1-CG intro/cut-scene level graphics in current-gen console games. I predict that next-gen consoles like PS4 will be able to handle Toy Story in real time, 16-18 years after that film came out, depending on when PS4 launches.
We were already seeing scaled down versions of CG films like Antz and FF: TSW done real-time on Sony's GSCube, the 16-way parallal PS2 with lots more RAM. Certainly the PS3 can do better than that now, and the PS4 should be an order of magnitude or so beyond than PS3.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

it's a very british take on things (it *is* eurogamer, after all) but still some nice insightful gems.

 

[Melchiah]

Nope, promises about Toy Story graphics on the PS2 were made, though the incident you cited is frequently illogically cited as evidence that they weren't. Anyway, the person being quoted was in Sony PR. I doubt he'd mix up a claim he made with something his competitors said.

I'm surprised none of the pre-launch hype about the PS2's online plans were mentioned in the article since that was even more purely fictional.

The person I quoted was, at the time, the head of Xbox division.

So, show me a quote (outside the Eurogamer article) that shows a Sony representative saying the same.

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

Great story thx for the heads up. Had alot of good times on the ps2.

 

[leroy hacker]

So, show me a quote (outside the Eurogamer article) that shows a Sony representative saying the same.

Why isn't the Eurogamer article itself evidence? Why do you think he would mix up something his company did with something his competitor did? Do you think everything Sony ever said to the press was recorded for posterity as direct quotes in published articles? If you look at any of these articles you'll see that most of the information isn't presented in the form of quotes. That CNN article jvm posted for example doesn't have any direct quotes from Sony, but clearly most of the information came from Sony.


I don't understand this obsession some people seem to have with the belief that Sony never said anything about Toy Story graphics to the extent that they assume a direct confession from Sony PR must be wrong. We all know that Sony made absurd claims about the ps2, e.g. the Matrix comment, so what's the big deal?

 

[Lain]

You know, in regards to Toy Story graphics, I only remember a quote by George Lucas saying that you could render Toy Story in real-time with PS2s.

As far as I'm concerned, Sony might have promised Toy Story graphics, but unless someone provides the actual quote in which it was said, it is just not a 100% true thing for me, it's just a maybe.

 

[H_Prestige]

This system seemed good at first, but in retrospect it was terrible. FFXII is the only great game looking back. Beyond that it is a system full of nerdy anime games and derivative sports titles. No memorable multiplayer experiences either. Really the definition of shovelware system. Last gen was really defined by the Cube for me, as Xbox was just a more powerful ps2 that had Halo.

I think the ps1 was more of a classic since it had all kinds of games and creativity was abundant. Also Square was on a roll back then.

 

[Spiegel]

Wow

 

[vazel]

This system seemed good at first, but in retrospect it was terrible. FFXII is the only great game looking back. Beyond that it is a system full of nerdy anime games and derivative sports titles. No memorable multiplayer experiences either. Really the definition of shovelware system. Last gen was really defined by the Cube for me, as Xbox was just a more powerful ps2 that had Halo.

I think the ps1 was more of a classic since it had all kinds of games and creativity was abundant. Also Square was on a roll back then.

R
The PS2 actually had one of the first popular online console games with Socom. "Nerdy anime games" :lol There probably will never be another console with as diverse a game library as the PS2. Don't base your view of the PS2 library on the last few big games released on the system(Persona games, Sakura Wars).

 

[Manmademan]

This system seemed good at first, but in retrospect it was terrible. FFXII is the only great game looking back. Beyond that it is a system full of nerdy anime games and derivative sports titles. No memorable multiplayer experiences either. Really the definition of shovelware system. Last gen was really defined by the Cube for me, as Xbox was just a more powerful ps2 that had Halo.

I think the ps1 was more of a classic since it had all kinds of games and creativity was abundant. Also Square was on a roll back then.

:lol :lol

hilariously wrong, but keep it up. I could use some comedy today

Up until then with PS1, N64 etc, we had 3D, but we were used to seeing everything as a jagged, abstract mess. PS2 really did bring detailed-enough characters (and environments) that the characters could now emote and be staged just like a CG film. Look at FFX and MGS2. Technically they might not have been as high res as even the earlier Pixar blockbusters, but it really was close enough to that effect that it doesn't matter (even today IMO... and especially a decade ago).

this is a pretty good point. IIRC one of the reasons for naming the PS2 CPU the "emotion engine" was that the PS2 was going to be able to render characters in enough detail that expression and emotion were clearly visible and able to be interpreted. we take it for granted now, but that was a far off target during the PS1/Saturn/N64 era.