Playstation 2’s are in such demand for the holidays that retailers reportedly can’t keep up. But gamers will soon be frothing for the next generation console, the PS3.

This week, Sony, Toshiba, and IBM announced that they will reveal the PS3’s much-hyped “Cell” chip in February 2005 at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, California. Packing a 64-bit power processor, the Cell has been described by IBM designer Jim Kahle as “a supercomputer on a chip [that] will be significantly faster than previous types of game systems and should provide new effects.”

The PS3 fever will heat up even more when the system gets revealed in Japan in March 2005. The PS3 is expected to makes its North American debut at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game convention held in Los Angeles, California in May. No word on Microsoft’s plans for a new Xbox, which, despite the success of Halo 2, needs to dramatically step up its game.