Sony held a developer, analyst and press meeting on March 15th in Japan. At this meeting they revealed the following new details about their upcoming Playstation 3 console
- A worldwide simultaneous release date of November 11th 2006
- A required 2.5" 60GB Hard Drive. Whether or not a hard drive is included in the box is unknown
- Developer kit specifications are now finalized
- The final PS3 developer kits will be sent to developers in June
- Sony has a Blu-Ray Disc (BD-ROM) manufacturing capacity of 10 million per month with a cost per disc comparable to dual-layer DVD discs.
- All PS3 games shipped will be written on BD-ROM discs to help curb piracy.
- HDMI support on the PS3 will be available at launch
- Sony's PS3 manufacturing capability is 1 million per month. They expect to have shipped and sold 6 million PS3s by March of 2007.
- A standardized online network solution is being developed in the same world as Xbox Live, so downloadable content, messages, lists, etc will be available.
- Online matchmaking will use Gamespy technology
- The PS3 will be fully backwards compatible with all PS1 and PS2 games. Some games may even include enhanced visuals.
