- This is a PlayStation 3.
Well, at least it sort of is.
It does function as a PS3
but it would be better described
as the DECR-1000A Reference Tool.
It's two feet long, weighs all whopping 40 pounds
and it makes even Sony's largest finished PlayStations
look like Fisher Price toys,
but where did this thing come from?
It was spring of 2005
and Sony was producing the tools that developers
would need to build games for their upcoming platform.
The earlier silver-colored models were used
by internal Sony game devs.
While the later black models
ours included
were destined for third-party studios,
closer to the launch of the console.
That is, as long as those studios had deep pockets.
The exact cost of each reference tool
in those early days, isn't known for sure
but we've seen accounts that suggest they could have run up
to $50,000
(cash register chimes)
per unit.
And that is on top of alleged early adoption fees.
The truly wild part though,
is that any decent-sized studio would need
a lot more than just one of them.
And then, you can imagine the pain
of dropping that kind of cash only to see the price
for these plummet first to $20,000 each, then to 10
when they were released more broadly in 2007,
by 2009 a Dev Kit
with a much more traditional PlayStation 3 look
could be had for as little as $2,000.
It's almost like Sony was having a heck of a time
attracting developers in the early days.
So how did they use these hulking behemoths
to craft games on the PlayStation 3
and what secrets lie beneath its thin steel chassis?
We're gonna find out.
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- To start with, this is not our hardware
and out of respect for dev Jeff, the one who sent it to us,
we have agreed to obey a few ground rules.
First of all,
we cannot show you these two binders of documents.
Only this one.
We cannot disassemble the PS Vita.
We must shout out Obscure Gamers
for providing us some software,
and we are not to touch buttons or switches
on the PS Vita's bare board.
PS Vita, you ask?
Ah, yes,
the PS3 Dev Kit is only part of the story today
but we will get to that later.
First, let's take a closer look at this thing
because it is absolutely wild.
The PS3 went through several hardware revisions
but even aside from the sheer size and girth
there are a number of things that set the
Reference Tool apart from all of them.
First up is IO.
Like the original PlayStation 3 fat
you know, the one that had four USB ports
as well as an onboard PlayStation 2?
It's got an SD card reader, memory stick pro reader,
compact flash, all that good stuff.
Four USB ports, a hard drive and a Blu-ray disc drive.
But unlike that one, it's got two more USB ports
an entire additional freaking hard drive.
Whatever the foot switch is?
Actually that's really cool.
We're gonna explain that later.
And oh, flipping it around to the back.
Excuse me.
Not one, but two network ports.
One for developer use, one for regular use.
Four analog audio outputs.
Apparently this is for sound mixing?
A monitor port for your VGA CRT monitor.
And, if we look really carefully
under this definitely super secure tape.
We can find two more ethernet ports.
These are apparently for low level debugging
only for Sony's use.
Oh, sorry, sorry, Sony.
Let me just-
And it's got a lot more going on under the hood.
512 megs of Ram compared to the standard 256
in the PlayStation 3.
Extensive debug menus.
This was a lot less exciting that I was hoping.
Do you know where everything goes?
If I just start tearing it apart
are you able to put it back together?
- [Writer] More or less.
- Cool. That sounds like something
for dev Jeff to figure out.
This totally explains why it weighs so flipping much.
Oh my God.
This is all just air ducting and daughter boards.
Sorry, I got distracted.
I was supposed to be telling you other cool stuff.
It's got extensive debug menus
and, get this, no copy protection.
The firmware can be upgraded or downgraded at will.
And those drives in the front?
They're not 30 or 60 gigs.
They are 400 gigs.
So you can load this baby up.
Also. It should be noted
that they feature no redundancy whatsoever.
Oh, I guess I can't open them right now
while it's powered off.
So we'll have to show you that later.
If one of them dies, you lose everything.
Look at this power supply,
this whole freaking thing.
Wait, what?
Hold on a second.
Is this 1,000 watt power supply?
Is that right?
Am I misunderstanding here
or is this 1,000 watt power supply?
Why does it need 1,000 watt power supply?
Wait!
Whoa.
Copper bases, four heat pipes,
giant aluminum FIN stacks and each, the cell CPU
and the Nvidia six, 7,000 series based GPU
get one of these.
But what's the purpose of this daughter board here then?
Because I see some older standard memory.
I see some kind of
central processor of some sort,
a firmware chip,
and then what appears to be an FPGA?
- [Writer] That's a web server.
- Shut up.
It's a web server?
- [Writer] Yes.
- Oh my God.
That makes sense.
It's right next to the dev LAN port
right here
so that you can connect to and control
and monitor all the elements of the rest of the system
without actually relying on the system itself.
So if you suffer some kind of catastrophic crash,
you're still going to be able to log those errors
and well, hopefully fix them.
I've been informed that under this daughter board
is another daughter board.
Would you call that a granddaughter board?
Second daughter board?
Son board?
Another FPGA though.
So it's clear that they're doing
some very custom shiz in here.
If you don't know, FPGAs,
or Field-Programmable Gate Arrays,
are essentially chips that are a blank slate.
So instead of designing them,
fabbing them, and then them serving one fixed function,
you can program them in the field,
as the name would imply,
to serve any number of different functions.
They are much more expensive per unit.
So they only make sense in very small volumes
but they're super cool and are actually
how retro enthusiasts have managed to
resurrect outdated hardware designs
for the next generation of gamers.
I have to imagine that this is the original
thermal paste and it's never been pulled off.
Oh, it's really stuck.
(writer laughing)
(hardware clicks)
Ooh.
That is definitely original thermal paste.
Hey dev Jeff, I'm gonna do you a favor.
I'm gonna put some new thermal goop on there for you,
all right?
One fun fact while we pull off the last panel here
is that compared to the first generation fat PS3
the Reference Tool is actually missing a crucial feature.
It does not contain the dedicated PlayStation 2
hardware that enabled Sony's, up until now,
never-before-seen multiple generations
of backwards compatibility.
This was only for developing PlayStation 3 games,
not for validating your old PS2 games on PS3 hardware
because you didn't need to.
That hardware would be in the final units.
What is a CXV 2973 AGB-1?
It's the south bridge.
Oh, okay.
Uh-oh.
(writer chuckling)
I think it had a back plate on it
and I think it shifted.
No, I got it.
I got it.
It's back in place.
Okay. I'm gonna screw that back on
right now.
(Linus yelps)
Remember how I said I had explained the foot switch?
This is super cool.
It was so that developers with their foot
in case they were doing other things with their hands
could stop code from executing like immediately.
We'll be using a wired PS3 controller by the way,
we don't have any PS3 controllers
that still have working batteries
which (clears throat)
is why I always say, double A's, Microsoft, good job.
Just get rechargeable double A's.
Oh, no.
I wanna play with this hard drive now first.
Woo. Okay.
That's kind of cool actually.
(mechanism clicks)
Whoa.
Okay. PC case manufacturers,
I wanna see that mechanism.
(electronic beeping)
Whoa.
It's not that loud.
Which makes sense, given that this would have to sit
at a developer's workstation, right?
So you don't want to have it be like fricking
85 decibels, sound like a jet.
Wow. That, that was really fast to boot up.
Was that supposed to be so fast?
Wait, this is running the latest PlayStation 3 firmware?
So like you could just run any modern game with this thing?
- [Writer] Yes.
- What?
All right.
Debugger. Game output resolution.
Oh, okay.
You just set all kinds of different game output resolutions.
Sure. Why not?
Game output sound maximum number of channels.
Fake other region?
I mean, sure.
HDCP just (snaps) see you later.
This is amazing.
And, unlike the other developer kit
that we looked at recently,
this one existed before the days of just
you know, remote kill switches.
Sony, apparently hasn't even locked out the ability
of this thing to connect to PlayStation network.
It should still function as a full-on PlayStation 3.
Fake free space?
What is this?
Sure.
Let's fake some free space.
Fake system storage access speed.
Oh cool.
Slow mode. 20 gig hard drive.
So you can just turn this thing into whatever
you want it to be.
Format Blu-ray disk emulator hard drive?
That is awesome.
So you can just load ISOs on it.
You could do up to four games with that.
Imagine if they just shipped hardware, that was this good.
And this convenient to end-users.
How much better of a world would we live in?
Whoa. Transfer rate pacing for Blu-ray disc emulator.
You can lock the Blu-ray disc emulator
to the equivalent of a Blu-ray drive.
Or you can run it at hard drive native for like (snaps)
presumably way faster loading times.
What if. What's what if?
Hold on a second.
Is this a development build of what if?
Shut up. So you actually walk around
to- woo wow.
We teleported a little bit there.
They have a level selector that clearly
was not intended to make its way into the game.
Like what is over this wall?
I wanna know.
Can I, oh, oh, oh.
Denounce Nathan, protect Nathan.
Well obviously we'll protect Nathan.
Oh, cool.
I haven't played this game, sorry.
But I can see what's happening here.
This game has a choice system.
So what it's doing is it's taking us through
the previous one so we can play that version of the level.
Okay. Well we did take a picture of Victoria.
She's hot.
I don't know. I'm just making this up.
Is Victoria a love interest?
I come out and blame Chloe.
Okay. Now I play the level.
That is
wicked.
Town. (laughs)
Bus.
Oh, goodbye, floor.
Reload last checkpoint?
Sure?
Oh, oh. Oh.
- [Writer] You're in the bus now.
- [Linus] I'm in the bus.
Oh, bye bus. (chuckles)
If you ever find yourself complaining that a game
is super buggy at release,
let's all just remember this, okay?
It could have been a lot worse.
Oh, no way.
Little Big Planet deploy build?
- [Writer] That one is kind of (beep).
The other Little Big Planet is pretty good though.
- I want the (beep) one.
Hello? This one's not even doing a thing.
Forget it. Forget it.
I'm out. Fine.
We'll try the less broken Little Big Planet.
(Linus mimics trumpet)
Okay. So how do I go to the dev menu?
- [Writer] Settings.
Settings.
Ooh, debug settings.
Oh my God.
That is awesome.
Disable tutorials.
Just don't bother with that.
See you later, music.
I don't care about that.
Streamer friendly.
Okay. This is a long menu.
Oh, wireframe.
(Linus gasps)
I wanna play on wireframe.
Yep. Oh, that's hilarious.
- [Writer] Grab yourself a keyboard.
- A keyboard.
Okay. Keyboard's plugged in.
Now what do we do?
- [Writer] Go to your Unreal Tournament looking one.
- Unreal Tournament.
Wait, Unreal Tournament, that says Gears of War 3.
- [Writer] It does say Gears of War 3.
- Oh, no way.
So I have to hack sorta the mainframe to play this?
Wait a minute. Gears of War 3?
Why did it take me so long to register that?
Are we about to play Gears of War 3 on a PlayStation?
Is this like games industry drama that's well known
that I just was not aware of.
Was it going to be multiple platform and then?
- [David] It still has the Xbox buttons.
- [Linus] What?
Push the tilde button. Like that.
Start geargame_p?
Chapter equals zero.
Oh, okay.
What? It's only running at 17, 18, 19 FPS,
but it's Gears of War 3 running on a PlayStation.
Honestly, though, it's impressive that this runs at all
given how different the PlayStation 3 was
compared to the Xbox 360
which this game was designed to run on.
12 FPSs (gasps)
(Linus mimics gun)
Yeah. This is a very brown
- [David] It's a flashback.
- And tan game.
Oh, okay.
How many of these guys do you have to kill?
Geez. And they blow up.
I mean, that makes perfect sense.
And we saved the best part for last.
Remember how I alluded to that definitely actually
a PS Vita thing at the beginning?
Well, believe it or not,
this PS3 Dev Kit was instrumental in developing
for the PS Vita.
And I'll show you how the early Vita prototype Dev Kit units
hooked up to it.
We've got the whole thing hooked up
and here's how it works.
You've got a PSP power adapter
that powers this little breakout port.
Then you've got a DVI input
because, this actually drives,
ah, this guy right here
which is gonna be the display
that we're using as a game developer.
There are actually some cameras as well.
We've got two cameras, they sort of work.
And this back here,
that's a touch surface.
Apparently developers would actually take this
and like duct tape it to the back of a controller
for development so that they could
try out their control schemes. Pretty wild, right?
Then the way the PS3 Dev Kit figures into all of this
is that DVI input over there,
that's actually coming from the HDMI output
of the PS3 Dev Kits.
So we're essentially emulating the PS Vita hardware
here on the PS3.
As for a controller, we just plug that in via USB
to our Dev Kit.
And, we should be good to go.
Unfortunately, this is as far as we can get with this guy.
You need a special firmware in order to enable
the back touch as well as the front touch screen.
And we weren't able to find any working PS Vita ROMs
that were able to fire up with our system here
but it's still cool to see how developers
had to (laughs)
had to build for this thing.
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(upbeat music)
- If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also enjoy the one where we checked out
an Xbox Series X Development Kit.
It did end up being a bit more locked-down
but the hardware itself was very cool.