It'll cost you an arm and a leg but you'll never have to buy another Sony console again (for a while)
17:35 Ken Kutaragi has once again stated that gamers can expect a wallet-busting price point when Sony's PS2 successor hits the stores sometime next year.
Speaking at the Playstation Meeting in Japan, Sony's president did however go some way to explaining exactly why the PS3 is likely to warrant all that extra overtime.
Sony hopes that its next-gen console will have a ten year lifespan, meaning all that technical gubbins inside the machine is going to have to be pretty spiffy from the off, if games are going to look as good in 2016 as they will in 2006. Kutaragi explained, "We're currently shifting from standard TVs to HD TVs. But in the next couple of years, most flat-panel TVs will be full HD. We're releasing the PS3 with full HD features from the start so that consumers won't have to buy another version of the console in the future. For the same reason, we're using Blu-ray as the PS3's disc format."
The outspoken Sony exec went on to admit that the company is aware the console's price is likely to be out of reach for the mass market initially but hopes the machine will be desirable enough to attract the hearts, and hard-earned cash, of hardcore fans at launch: "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to."
Whether Sony's predictions are right and its silver box is genuinely equipped to cater to gamers for the next decade remain to be seen. However, we'd kind of hoped that by 2016 we'd all have microchips in our heads, beaming virtual reality Mario 1280 holo-graphics down our nostrils.