Some assimilation required?

[Neo]

from CNN:

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- While Sony Corp. basks in the success of its PlayStation 2 in the $30 billion-plus-a-year videogame market, expectations are rising that its successor will be out of the box by 2005, in an entirely different form.

Sony remains tight-lipped about the timing of the next generation's debut, but it is dropping some hints about the product's likely shape -- or more accurately, lack of shape.

"We're not thinking about hardware," said Kenichi Fukunaga, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), the Sony subsidiary that develops and makes the PlayStation.

"The ideal solution would be having an operating system installed in various home appliances (what the hell does that mean?) that could run game programs," he said.

Fuelling expectations of a 2005 target date is a microchip project among SCE, Toshiba Corp., Japan's largest chipmaker and co-producer of the PlayStation 2's complex microprocessor, and International Business Machines Corp.

The four-year project, code-named "cell" and due for completion in spring 2005, aims to create a powerful processor for home electronics with ultra-fast Internet connections that could, for example, transmit high-resolution moving pictures.

"It's possible PlayStation 3 would come out in 2005, since that's when Sony's cell project will yield something," said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd.