The Richter Scale^®

Following on to the story below, Sony believes they will sell 2 million units of the PS3 at launch, and 4 million by the end of 2006. See chart below.

I think these numbers are rather ambitious, especially at the price point involved, but only if one looks at the PS3 as a gaming system.

If one looks at the PS3 as a very capable Blu-Ray player, Sony’s forecasts may not be far off, and in fact may be the result of being production bound.

But, in order to convince the masses that Blu-Ray is the wave of the future in home movie entertainment, Sony and its partners will have a lot of difficult work ahead of them. This is where Sony’s experience with consumers will come into play.

It’s official at the Sony Press Conference - Sony PS3 pricing and availability has been announced.

The PS3 will ship in Japan on November 11, 2006 and everywhere else on November 17, 2006, in two configurations: one with a 20GB hard disk and the other with a 60GB hard disk.

In Japan the 20GB model will sell for 59,800 yen and the 60GB pricing will be up to retailers.

In the U.S. the 20GB model will sell for $499 (CDN$549) and the 60HB model for $599 (CDN$659).

And pricing for Europe is 499 and 599 Euros, respectively.

Photos a bit later on.

Well, all the comments about the ugly boomerang shaped PS3 controller shown at last year’s E3 hit home.

The new PS3 controller looks just like the PS2 and PS1 controllers, but adds 6 Degrees of Freedom, sensing the tilt and acceleration of the controller as you hold and move it.

Photos a bit later on.

More slides from today’s PS3 presentation at the Sony press conference can be found below.

Kaz Harai of Sony has added some more details to the PS3 launch. In addition to still targeting an early November launch, Kaz confirmed that the PS3 will ship standard with a hard disk and HD 1080p output (this was known).

Also included will be a Gigabit Ethernet port.

I’m at Sony Picture Studios in Culver City this after, waiting for the Sony press conference to start on Stage 15. There are over a thousand other media folks waiting as well, enjoying Sony’s open bar (my favorite beverage hers is the 0 carb XS Energy Drink from XS Gear).

As a way for the media to get some of the press conference content, Sony has provided hotspots here where journalists with PSPs could download images, MP4 video clips and more.

Screen shots and trailers included ones from the following forthcoming games: ATV Offroad Fury Pro, Gangs of London, God of War II (pictured below), Killzone Liberation, NBA 07, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, Rogue Galaxy, SingStar, SOCOM: Combined Assault (pictured below), SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 2, and World Tour Soccer 06.

It promises to be an interesting event, considering Sony had originally indicated at last year’s E3 that it would be launching the P3 in May 2006. Now that the date has slipped to November (partially on rumors of Blu-Ray drive availability issues), Sony’s pitch today will be telling.

Having seen HD-DVD players and titles on sale at Best Buy this past weekend, it remains to be seen if the PS3’s delayed release will hurt Blu-Ray’s chances.

At least, with the PS3 release only a half year away, we should be able to see real demos here in Los Angeles this week, instead of last year’s mock-ups (which were breathtaking).

One of the first things that struck me today at the Los Angeles Convention Center was Sony’s bold new marketing campaign - “Play Beyond”.

One visual of that new campaign is the extreme rock-paper-scissors visual in my previous blog entry (see exterior shot of the LACC entrance in entry below). And directly below is another huge image on the side of the adjacent Staples Center, featuring a skate boarder about to take on an extreme half pipe.

Yet another visual shows someone on a gigantic swing set which looks like a quarter mile wide stone arch.

I’m sure Sony’s marketing staff has come up with a nice, clear, concise message about what this new campaign is meant to say. In my words it tells me that Sony is portraying itself (and presumably via the forthcoming PS3) as “taking games to the extreme”.

Los Angeles doesn’t quite seem the same when it’s overcast and dark, and the sun is nowhere to be seen. One can only hope the weather here this week is not a precursor to the future of the video game industry (photos below).

That said, even though the show floor doesn’t open for another two days, there’s a quiet sort of energy at the Los Angeles Center, as exhibitors prepare for an onslaught of retailers, media, and anyone else who has managed to wangle their way past the scrutiny of registration desk staff.

Strict warnings indicating the show is a trade only event can be found at every entrance, and show staff I spoke to said they had already seen a fair number of false IDs presented during the media pre-registration process. Even more outrageous is that E3 show staff had found E3 Media Badges for sale on eBay for as much as $500 already. Desperation among the younger set creates a lucrative black market.

Over 400 exhibitors are expected to show their latest wares, which include a vast number of new video game titles for consoles, handhelds, and PCs, including almost a thousand “never before seen” games and products (E3’s words, not mine).

I’ll be spending all next week in Los Angeles for the E3 show and conference.

E3 is the video game and entertainment industry event of the year, where all the latest games in development are previewed for buyers and the media. Stay tuned here for on-going reports from the show, including some cell-phone photo and story blogging similar to my live posts from E3 last year.

I will also be convering industry trend issues and intellectual property matters for my column in Jon Peddie’s TechWatch.

Those of you who feature links to patents on the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) web site on your own sites or in your Favorites, beware. On Tuesday, May 2nd, around 4:30pm EDT, the USPTO switched their patent search system over to a new set of servers which changed a number of things.

This change, as best I can tell, was not announced (if anyone finds an announcement, please let me know).

The biggest change in the new patent search database form are that all patent numbers now must be seven characters in length, padding the left end of patent numbers with zeros. So, the design patent D123,456 now needs to be specified as D0123456, for example.

This change to new servers at the USPTO also resulted in links to search results no longer working as the URLs for search results have changed subtly too. So, any Favorites you might have stored in your web browser to link to a particular patent are now broken too.

I noticed the change a couple of hours after it happened because of both high error reports and a user complaint the that Patent Fetcher service I developed a few years ago had stopped functioning properly for fetching patent publications from the USPTO servers not already on the Patent Fetcher file server. It took several frantic hours of coding, but Patent Fetcher now works just as it did before (and leading zeroes are not required).

I should note that U.S. patent applications were unaffected by this change, as they are located on other servers at the USPTO.