Also unexpected was a feature in "Genji" to install the game, committing 4GB of data from the game's Blu-Ray disc to the PS3's hard drive — a three-minute one-time-only procedure available from the game's start menu that a Sony rep said cuts down in-game load times from about 15 seconds to four seconds. That's something Sony can offer, given that both versions of its console include a hard drive — 20GB and 60GB, respectively.

At Sony's Gamer's Day event today, GamePro editor Vicious Sid had the chance to grab a few minutes with Sony's PS3 frontman, Phil Harrison. We touched on several topics: Blu-ray disc speeds, internal power supplies, and that nagging question -- is the PS3
 

 
Phil Harrison: What surprised you? What was the thing that you weren't expecting to see?
 
Vicious Sid: I think...to see so many games in 1080p, looking as good as they did. I think there's this assumption that in some way the Xbox 360 has more graphical power. It's got 512 MB of dedicated video RAM...and that somehow the PlayStation 3 is a notch below that.
 
Harrison: That's not true, by the way.
 
Sid: I'm not sure how that works. I guess it's 256 video RAM, 256 system RAM [on the PS3]?
 
Harrison: No, the way that Xbox 360 works is that they have 512 MB of memory, same as PlayStation 3. But they have general purpose memory, rather than system-specified memory. But they only have a 10 MB internal frame buffer...
 
    There's no disadvantage [to Blu-ray], there's only advantages in terms of bandwidth, content, and detail."
 
    --Sony corporate executive Phil Harrison
 
Sid: Yes, that's true...
 
Harrison: ....and so that's why they can't do 1080p full frame. Because the image has to be in the frame buffer and a full 1080p image is 8 megabytes, so you can't double buffer.
 
Sid: What do you think Microsoft's biggest vulnerability is right now?
 
Harrison: I'd rather talk about the strengths of PlayStation 3. I think that what we showed today maybe completes the puzzle that we didn't do a good enough job of completing at E3. Partly because the technology wasn't ready in all areas, but partly because we focused on the games...I think people were expecting to see more of the multimedia functionality explained. But that's then, and this is now. The integrated nature of the system is now obvious.
 
The fact that you've got cross media bar icons, ways of getting content into the system -- physically -- and digitally....
 
Sid: It comes full circle, with the PSP...
 
Harrison: Exactly! Did you get a chance to see the PSP [at the demo presentation]? It uses the full cross media bar [from the PS3]!
 
Sid: Obviously supply is going to be an issue for you guys through the end of the year. Is Sony still holding firm to launch shipment projections and through the end of March 2007.
 
Harrison: Yeah. I think that every successful game system has had some challenges in matching demand with supply day one. Sadly, we're going to be no different.
 
But, this seems a very difficult situation now, but in five years we'll be looking back and this will be a tiny little blip on the sales. While it's disappointing for users -- certainly disappointing for users in Europe, where we had to delay the launch -- but we'll catch up. We'll get supply going, we'll get the product out there, and we'll satisfy everybody.
 
Sid: One thing I find fascinating about the PS3 is that so much is integrated into one package; it's a very "neat" system, with integrated Blu-ray and especially the integrated power supply. Why is that important?

Harrison: Blu-ray functionality is something you get essentially for free. We need it for a game system, we need it as a game developer, and the fact that the disk is the same kind of format that gives us the movie cupcake as well -- that's great. And that was a strategic choice, as well as a tactical, practical, commercial choice.
 
[an IGN video crew has been rather visibly waiting for Harrison to finish up with me. Harrison turns to an approach crew member and says "I'll be with you in one second." He's clearly engaged when speaking about the PS3's hardware and wants to finish his thought.]
 
Harrison: Integrating the power supply is not for competitive reasons -- it's because we can....
 
Sid: [laughs]
 
Harrison:... It's because we have great hardware designers who can handle the functionality. In fact, because of the CPU power and performance of PlayStation 3, we need to have to have the power supply as close to the chipset as it possibly can be. And so that is the right technical approach. It's exactly what we did with PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2, and then you saw later in the platform's life cycle, when the different silicon process are used, you can go to a small external power supply, which allows you to change the form factor...
 
Sid: Do you think that's in the cards for PS3? A slim-line PS3?
 
Harrison: [completely deadpan] I wouldn't even speculate on that.
 
Sid: There's been some talk about DVD-9 [dual-layer DVD, as in the Wii and Xbox 360], and whether it's actually faster in transfer speeds than Blu-ray. Is Blu-ray faster or slower than DVD-9, practically speaking?
 
Harrison: There is no practical game design difference between Blu-ray [and DVD-9] in terms of speed. You get the benefits of storage -- more files on the disk, more data on the disk. So once developers are up to speed on the logical geography of the [Blu-ray] disc, loading times will be sorted out.

There's no disadvantage [to Blu-ray], there's only advantages in terms of bandwidth, content, detail, et cetra.
 
Sid: Looks like you're out of time. Thanks again!