Enter any forum thread 'discussing' and 'speculating' the merits of next-generation consoles and you inevitably will hear someone state that Sony said the PS2 would be pumping out visuals on par with Toy Story. This, of course, is meant to ridicule anyone using official Sony remarks as having any basis in reality. In fact, even IGN used it as one of two pieces of 'evidence' in a recent Roundtable discussion oriented around specious Sony press statements.

Sadly, the quote is horribly misattributed as it wasn't Sony that delivered the quote - the source is actually Bill Gates. Wired reported the following from the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show:

Gates said the 3-D chips in the Xbox would be three times faster than anything on the market and offer nearly unlimited graphical visuals. "We're approaching the level of detail seen in Toy Story 2," he said, referring to the computer-generated kids film from Disney/Pixar.

CNET also reported a similar remark, however they do infer that Blackley stated it instead of Gates:

"One of the basic premises of the Xbox is to put the power in the hands of the artist," Blackley said, which is why Xbox developers "are achieving a level of visual detail you really get in 'Toy Story.'"

Now please, the next time you get an inkling to bash Sony's statements regarding hardware potential, don't pull out the 'Toy Story' quote. Leave that for when you're talking about Microsoft.