I heard they threw away the ps3 prototype controller but it came back

I'm here 4 years later, and Jon is definetly chasing the 1080p dream

"I'm sure the full story of what this demonstration was, will come to light." Actually, No Clip had this question of Killzone 2 answered in their documentary of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Basically, Guerilla provided this Target render to Sony to show their vision,and they decided to include it in the E3 presentation. It was a PR person being interviewed who said it was real-time and everything kind of just snowballed from there.

I didnt know DigitalFoundry did roastings.

Hilarious that we look at 2005 as being so old saying "back in the day". Doesn't seem that long ago.

Omg this is making me feel old. I was only 22 during this E3. Turned 23 later that August. Now 35 turning 36 this August :( I’ve never felt old before till now. Jesus time flies.

It’s baffling how Sony was able to dodge the fake presentation back in 2006, nowadays it’ll be shredded to the ground

2005: Phil Harrison selling PS3 lies 2019: Phil Harrison selling Stadia lies

$600

It's insane to see how much CG was used here in their conference. Thanks for taking a look at this, I missed the conference back in the day (never ran across the DVD of it) so this was definitely interesting to watch.

I think /noclip has a video with people from Guerilla where they talk about this and what happened. If I remember correctly it was an internal Guerilla video. Supposedly it was a video that showed what they "aimed" for internally. It was not supposed to leave the office - much less being featured on E3. But somehow Sony got their hands on it and played it without notifying Guerilla. So the story goes, at least.

Those lamenting the change from the old Kutaragi-era approach of PlayStation hardware design to the more "PC" like hardware design from Sony of today simply don't understand the fundamental balances that a proficient hardware design must achieve. Three case studies: the Emotion Engine, Cell, and the Graphics Synthesizer. Each was essentially the result of pushing poor designs to next level with relatively huge silicon budgets. While they might've been interesting from a purely academic standpoint to see what those inefficient approaches looked like at a higher scale, that scale did nothing to correct the underlying flaws The Graphics Synthesizer relied on multipass rendering to create effects rather than multi-texturing. Somehow, Sony didn't figure out what the graphics engineers of all of the other companies in the industry understood post-Voodoo1 that multi-texturing was a more efficient approach to applying effects, and that any loss in flexibility as compared to multi-pass was more than made up for in the extra performance and efficiency that was achieved. GS's approach was EOLed with its demise, and the industry has marched on down its path of smarter design successfully. The Emotion Engine and Cell both fail for the same reason as one another. Their job within a game system was to serve as a strong CPU. The job of a CPU, not just for spreadsheets but even for games, is to handle serial workloads full of dependent data, conditional operations, and branches. In a well balanced system, cores/chips are specialized to handle a specific type of common workload, and these different specialists (CPU for serial, GPU for parallel, video cores/DSPs for certain specific algorithms, etc) should ideally master their own work independently yet be able to work in harmony with the other specialists in the system. This is the heterogeneous processing model that's finally being embraced today. The little MIPS and PowerPC cores of the massive EE and Cell die, respectively, were nowhere near enough to serve as strong CPUs. The extra area on each die was filled with a bunch of math/vector units, which made them more suited to assisting with graphics. The problem is, giving what is essentially GPU silicon to a CPU is just imbalanced and less efficient. Those who argue that the Emotion Engine's and Cell's ALUs were more flexible than even a DirectX 11+ GPU miss the point of why the evolution of GPUs follows ever-advancing models of restricted functionality like Direct X feature sets in the first place. From the beginning, GPU designers could've designed graphics processors that were as flexible as CPUs, but the limited die area budgets they had in the early days meant that they would've had almost no performance to power those flexible pipelines. Instead, they realized that they could accelerate a set of fixed-functions and get a better return on investment of the silicon they were using. As new fabrication processes afforded more and more silicon, they had the choice of speeding up those fixed graphics functions even more or spending the silicon on being able to do a wider set of graphics functions. Once the visual return on investment from being able to do new effects, or at least similar effects in a more efficient way, started to outweigh just doing more of the same old graphics function, the feature set of GPUs would expand to a new level, characterized by an evolving API like DirectX and such. So, designing CPUs like the Emotion Engine and Cell with a ton of FLOPs was missing the point, not using the silicon to boost the functions a CPU was actually supposed to be doing, and doing work a GPU would've done more efficiently and with a better return on investment of the silicon used.

Nothing better than a DF Retro in a Sunday morning.

Sony arrogantly thought every developer will be happy to spend years studying the intricasies of CELL, but the market decided differently, naturally. The market ALWAYS chooses the path of least resistance

I miss the PS3/PSP days, it didn't felt that long ago but damn seeing the first games is very nostalgic

599 US DOLLARS! RIDGE RACER!... IT'S RIDGE RACER! GIANT ENEMY CRAB! REAL TIME WEAPON CHANGE! ATTACK IT'S WEAK POINT FOR MASSIVE DAMAGE! MEME GOLD

The good old days, when new console launches were accompanied by racing games. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer!

wow.. We made it ... Made it to were PS3/XBOX 360 is considered *"Retro"*

original ps3 design was awesome

You know what? I missed these types of press conferences at E3 that was more data driven and less gimmicky in the presentation. I just like them a lot more.

Excellent video, I really appreciate the amount of work you put into making these!

Few people really understand that the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU is a direct cousin of the Cell BE, both of which are descended from IBMs work on developing a "narrow", in-order but extremely high clocked PowerPC compatible core (I forgot what it was called). Essentially Xenon uses 3x modified PPE cores from the Cell (the main command processor) with expanded vector unit functionality (VMX128, dual 128-bit registers) and dual processing threads per core. Alot of Xenon articles from over a decade ago emphasize the procedural rendering capabilities of the processo. While it's not at the Cell BE's level of theoretical GFLOPS, what MS got was a much more suitable CPU for a games console since it was functionally more akin to multicore PowerPC and x86 processors of the time. Deficiencies in issue width, the in-order architecture, and a small L2 cache did create it's share of problems, but developers had a much easier time working through them as opposed to having to vectorize so much of their code that shouldn't have to be.

You MUST do the 2006 Sony E3 presentation. Legendary.

How about looking at the sega Dreamcast presentation - probably the opposite of the ps3 event, but facing the tsunami of the ps2.

3 words - Giant Enemy Crab

I’m a good leader, but this time Richard Leadbetter

It took 10 years and PS4 to reach the promised PS3 graphics standard.

I remember being pretty surprised when I got my PS3 in 2012 because almost universally games looked better on my 360. It wasn’t until I did research on the crazy development of the console that it made sense lol

*599 US Dollars*

The Emotion Engine and the Cell Processor... No wonder they went X86 for the PS4!

I loved this! I hope you guys do some extra bits / hour long commentary in the future. Thanks guys

Then in 2016/2017, the xbox one x was promised as "uncompromised 4k60." War never changes lmao

Great video guys! I personally would like to see you revisit the conference where the Sega Saturn was revealed as this was really where the whole idea of showing videos not actually running on retail hardware began. And maybe a comparison of some arcade games from the mid to late 90s vs their console version too at some point.

Please do the progression of MGS4 trailers. The first one was running at 60FPS looking amazing, and then the next one where Snake rolled around dodging grenades couldn’t even hold a steady 30. I’m interested to know why there was such a huge downgrade from one trailer to the next.

great video digital foundry, one of the best you've done so far in my opinion, really enjoyed this one!

Old video now but it would be cool for more DF Retro Extras like this where we can hear more about Richard's experiences from this era and around the earlier 2000s

John says at 11:23 that he'll post a link to the IBM guy's book on the history of the X360/PS3 processor development. Could you dig out that book please?

I love this series guys, been a gamer since i was old enough to hold a controller (early 90's) and getting these deep dives in to the stories of gaming's past is always fascinating.

This was a great video! I wouldn't mind seeing more in depth conference analysis.

This is so damn entertaining. I could listen to John and Rich talk about this stuff forever. Long live DF Retro.

Please do more of these. This was a lot of fun.

Digital Foundry, would you be able to post the .iso of the E3's DVD's you have of the conference somewhere?

DF Retro made my sunday, loved this episode.

LOVE this idea. There's isn't enough looking back in the industry, at least not to the standards DF sets in their videos. Would love to see more of these!

The PS3 is now considered retro?

Ni-oh announced 2005 for ps3......came out 2017/16...for ps4.....nobody said anything

This was great. I really hope you guys do this for other E3 shows and different years.

Oh man what a great and funny look back down memory lane. This conference sparked so much conversation and debate between me and my friends.

Well they didn't tell the truth that the PS3 was originally designed as a CELL B.E. SOC but they had to quickly re-engineer it to add an Nvidia GPU because it would totally fail if it was just the CELL B.E. so the PS3's launch had to be delayed 1 whole year. And also because it was a new architecture they couldn't make it backwards compatible with the PS2 which made them take the decision of adding the PS2's hardware inside which made it really expensive $600 at the time was more money than $600 nowadays. Because of inflation the dollar nowadays is less valuable, this is something that people NEVER take in consideration.

As far as the Killzone 2 trailer, the true story has come to light. Watch the Making of Horizon video. They spend a lot of time on how Guerrilla Games got to Horizon, going over the circumstances of the major Killzone titles and such. IIRC, NOBODY at GG intended it to be shown as gameplay. It was sent to Sony as a "target" or "design concept" video and they were all stunned when it popped up as their next game on a new system (lmao). Could be bullshit but they actually spend a good amount of time talking about this specific incident.

This is an extremely interesting kind of video. Would love to see more like this!

You guys never disappoint, absolutely fascinating from start to end!

That's trippy, hearing Alex being heralded as a new addition to the team. Haha

2005 "RSX - More powerful than 2 GeForce 6800 Ultras" 2016 "GTX 1080 - Faster than 980 SLI" Ahh, Nvidia. Some things just never change.

Would LOVE to see DF do a lot of other old conferences and presentations!

more podcast-like video's like this please. this was a lot of fun

GIANT ENEMY CRAB

Really interesting video, I'd love to see the presentations for all the 7th Gen consoles.

Yeah I'd love to see you guys do some commentary on E3 2006. And just random press conferences. This was great .

This was really enjoyable and hilarious - I'd love to see more similar content like this. Great job, guys!

I'm still waiting for 8 days to come out.

The PS3 reveal and launch was historically goofy. To be fair though, the amount of shit they got for their PS3 launch blunders had made their E3 conferences become more refined and natural. Now, their E3 conference and other similar Playstation events are annual highlights of the gaming industry.

I hope you guys are doing this for every conference livestream of this years E3

I have a question. What's that music mix that's playing in the background. There are some tracks from Ridge racer games etc. I'd love to have it on my phone to jam outside ;P

It's amazing that despite the mishaps Sony ended up winning that generation based on the sheer dedication of its first-party developers. Third-party devs didn't get the hang of the console for most of its life cycle which forced Sony to commit to first-party studios and ultimately those studios showed what could be done and the PS3 ended up outselling the Xbox 360.

man, I'll admit it wasn't easy being a ps3 fan back in 2006--2007. I used to be so excited for tuesdays cause that was when the psn store got updated with like a new demo or a new game trailer, haha, oh man takes me back.

Would be fun to see a series on comparing launch titles, mid life titles and end of life titles from different consoles, where you discuss the technical progress and how they were able to squeeze out better and better visuals. An interesting example is that despite the PS2 not really supporting Bump maps, they still were able to squeeze it in there in a few late life titles.

Would love to see more of these! Lots of fun to look back.

Didn't know Toshiba was supposed to provide a GPU different to the one we got for PS3. What was the theoratical specs for that component?

I still have a brand new set of these NextGen videos DVD 3 packs. I believe they released 3 years of them.

Loved the vid, please do more of other old conferences!

Loved these type of videos hopefully you do them for all platforms and years

I love the hard trance jams playing in the background. Feels like a rave.

I can't believe the PS3 can be called retro now. I still have an original fat one and I'm still getting new games to play for it.

Great video as always! Love the new guy ! He is very knowledgeable about the tech side of things which I love. I hope you include him more in the future! Cheers! ❤️

This was fantastic. Please do more, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole video.

Really cool retro video as usual. but I have to say, the audio is a little bit on the low side.

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOO NEW DF MEMBER

Amazing video, keep up the great work! Would love similar ones for the Wii, Xbox 360 and older Playstations.

DF Retro is life! I watched the whole video and i want more! Please, do E3 2006 Sony presentation!

Actually the Cell DID NOT just supplement the "poor GPU". It gave developers some extra power. The RSX was comparable to the Xenos but harder to program. The split RAM was harder to use but also FASTER (Rambus was a very fast solution for that time) . The RSX and Cell have their own dedicated fast memory. That allowed developers to use Cell as a second GPU.

@DigtalFoundry, do you guys can upload the DVD of the PS3 E3 2005 Conference (also if you have the Xbox360 and Wii first conferences) to youtube or any other resource?

Haha! I loved this, genuinely funny stuff going on here. It's nice to hear more of your personalities!

Loving these E3 reviews. More please!!! Can you do the 90s?

Really interesting to see this now, I remember being in middle school having beat DMC 3 with a bud from school a year or two earlier and watching this trailer and downloading the screenshots to DMC4, and my parents agreed to get me a PS3 if I did a good job babysitting my brother over the summer. DMC 4 was the first game I bought for it and I absolutely loved it. Very very different to the teaser shown, and there was a lot of backlash to nero which is funny looking back now with 5 out, but for 7th grade me it felt like a game that wasn’t possible on PS2 and really felt next gen at the time.

That motor storm trailer. Even today if somebody says ps5 will achieve that level of everything that was shown. I will not believe him.

I d love to see a coverage of the IBM/Nintendo presentation, with the early Zelda, and Luigi's Mansion tech demos.

I would love if they commentated over old E3 Press Conferences more. This was really great!

I made it to the end of the video! please do an Xbox 360 console retro video!

Wow, now do the xbox one E3 reveal next!

I wish they released the boomerang controller, even if limited edition. When you actually saw it in people's hands, it looked comfortable.

Awesome video and idea... Only thing I would point out is a quick "define" of the groups take on what is deemed 'fake", as it can be pretty nuanced. Make some more of these videos though!

Also, even tho there's a lot of faking here, last generation blow me away far more times than this current one, which more feels like a refinement than a giant leap.

Where is the giant enemy crab

This was fascinating, more E3 retrospectives please!

That background music of Ridge Racer at one point at the video was so epic.

Great video. I share the nostalgia for the days of companies creating exotic hardware to push the limits. As a kid seeing that was what inspired me to become an electrical engineer.

Ridge Racer 7, not 6. 6 was on 360.

Loved this video. It's crazy to think how old this conference was, I must have been 14 and still remember 90% of it haha.

Fascinating video and analysis, thanks for bringing it to us!