Last night while youse all were sleeping, Sony held a business conference in Japan and let loose some new PS3 details. These are not rumors, but actual words from Ken Kutaragi (Sony's president) himself. Here's the goods:
- GLOBAL RELEASE NOVEMBER 11th
- 60GB HDD 2.5" with pre-installed Linux OS will be included?
- Dev kit specs fix as of today
- Final PS3 development kits will be sent to developers in June
- 10.000.000 BD-ROMS manufacturing capability per month @ cost around same as 2-layer DVD
- Every PS3 game will be on a Blu Ray Disc, in an attempt to prevent piracy
- Price will not be less than 50.000YEN (~$425USD)
- PS3 will have HDMI support from launch
- Sony plans to produce 1 million PS3s a month; 6 million PS3s for FY2006 (by the end of March 07)
- Basic online service free, no details yet (could be XBLS for PS3)
- Full backwards compatibility, hi-res and texture filtering for all titles (akin to what the Xbox 360 does to Halo)
- The online service will be working off of GameSpy technology

PS3 wasn't the only thing mentioned last night. The PSP got some luvin' as well:
- Videophone in autumn
- MinGol GPS
- Eyetoy
- Flash support with next update
- Mem.Stick boot support in autumn
- First-gen PS1 official emulator
- Buy/download games from net
- $199 CORE PACK PSP being released in USA/Europe by end of March (March 22nd for Europe)
- 19,800 yen Ceramic White PSP CORE PACK from 15 April in Japan

Sweet! No software was mentioned at the conference. We can only assume Sony's gonna wait until E3 to showcase the new games.

Official Japanese press release here
http://www.playstation.jp/news/2005/pr_050517_ps3.html

Source: GAF