PlayStation 3 may be playable at Tokyo Games Show

Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi has given a strong hint that visitors to this year's Tokyo Games Show may get the chance to try out playable PlayStation 3 demos.

Speaking at the PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo last week, Kutaragi said: "We hope to use the Tokyo Game Show as a chance for everyone to get to know, or possibly experience, what next-generation entertainment is all about."

Kutaragi also unveiled the current PS3 development kit, codenamed Cytology, at the event. It runs at 2.4GHz with a 512MB memory and is about the same size of a PC, but Sony plans to produce a smaller version in December titled the 'PS3 reference Tool'. The new kit will run at 3.2GHz, like the PS3 itself.

So far only 450 PS3 dev kits have been shipped around the globe, according to Kutaragi, who explained that this was not by any means due to a lack of demand. "We've been getting a lot of requests from developers since E3 that they want more development kits for the PS3," he said.

"The demand for the kits has gone beyond what we can handle. We've been discussing what we can do about it."

Sony will ship 200 dev kits in August and another 300 in September but things will truly start to take off in October, when the rate of production will increase to 3000 units per month.

Kutaragi went on to restate earlier suggestions that the PS3 won't come cheap, telling the crowd: "I'm not going to reveal it's price today, I'm only going to say that it'll be expensive."