The possibility for a single next generation optical media format seems to be gone. While Sony has previously opened itself up to discussions with Toshiba on coming to a compromise in the upcoming Blu-ray versus HD-DVD format war, Sony Computer Entertainment chief Ken Kutaragi, in comments shared with the Nikkei Electronics, now states that it's "Game Over" for a compromise. According to Kutaragi, Sony does not want to delay production of the PS3 in order to wait for negotiations.

So it looks like the PS3 will ship with the format that SCE announced when first making mention of the system prior to last year's Tokyo Game Show: Blu-ray.

Elsewhere in the Nikkei story, Kutaragi made a few peculiar comments on the Cell processor. According to Kutaragi, the decision to include eight SPE units in the Cell was made with aesthetics in mind. When asked if the fact that only seven of the eight SPEs actually work (the eighth is there for "redundancy") is a violation of aesthetic principles, he states that this is itself an extremely good aesthetic, as it shows great engineering sense in improving yields of the chip.

Kutaragi made a few controversial comments about aesthetics with regards to the PlayStation Portable's hardware design a few months back. This time around, though, we don't think too many people will complain about one of their SPEs not working.

Source : IGN PS3