Recent moves by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) strongly suggest that PS3 will make use of Open API formats, rather than the proprietary formats used on all previous consoles.
A few weeks ago, SCE announced that they joined the Khronos Group, a “member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard, royalty-free APIs to enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices.” The group supports development and use of OpenGL ES, OpenML, OpenVG, and OpenMAX. At the time, SCE commented that they joined the group to explore possible future uses of the technology. This could mean it being used in PS3, or PS4, or possibly, PS27.
This all changed today with a posting on the SigGraph website. Collada is an Open 3D graphics format which is specifically designed for videogames. SCE will introduce Collada at the SigGraph 2004 Tech Talk which is being held August 11th. Collada was built from the collaboration of many 3D toolchain companies, including SCE, and like Khronos Group, will make use of the group support to enhance and standardize Open formats.
What does this tell us? Well, SCE has heavily invested into Open formats and are pledging their support of the formats now. This heavily suggest that the PS3 will use Open formats. What does this all mean? This means that developers will have a much easier time making games for the PS3 than ever before, and those games can be simply ported to an computer device which supports Open formats. More effort can be spent perfecting games rather than worrying about building multiple copies of the same game.
When Microsoft announced XNA, their upcoming format which would be used for all gaming applications, I bet they never thought that Sony would be working on the exact same thing. SCE not only found a format battle XNA, but possibly a format to crush it.
