Buy a PS3

Reasons to buy a Sony PS3

As gaming systems go, a PS3 is no small investment. In most countries, it is possible to buy both an Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii – Sony's current competitors in the console market – for the same as it would cost you to buy a Premium version of the PS3. As it currently stands, the PS3 will be the most expensive game console ever. The Premium version retails in Japan for in excess of ¥75,000 (US$630), starting November 11th, 2006. It doesn't hit North American markets until the 17th, when it will start selling for $599.

European, Australian and New Zealand, and Middle Eastern buyers will have to wait until March of 2007 before they can buy PS3's at home, for significantly inflated prices. As a result, hundreds of people in these areas are already bidding up to thousands of dollars on pre-orders placed by small retailers in Japan and North America, for private sales to Europe and elsewhere, on Ebay, and other online outlets.

The decision to buy one of those expensive consoles will not be made lightly for most consumers, so let's have a look at just what you're getting for the money.

- PlayStation Network Platform: PNP is the name of Sony's online socialising and matchmaking service. It will allow PS3 owners to play multiplayer games over the Internet, with no subscription cost. Billing services will be offered for Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMO's), which typically attract monthly fees regardless of platform, and PNP will also serve as a shop front, allowing PS3 owners to buy legacy PS, PS2, and Sega Genesis  games from Sony, and download them directly onto their hard drives to play later. PNP could be described as Sony's answer to Xbox Live Gold, which does attract monthly fees.
- The most powerful system architecture of any console system to date: When you buy a PS3, all that money is paying for something! While parallel processing has been done before, the use of eight independent “Processing Elements” within a single processor, configured at run time by software to perfectly tailor the CPU to the game being run is so revolutionary, it's normally reserved for low-end supercomputing, or in massive server farms, not in personal gaming machines. When it ships, the processing power available to the PS3 will be more than that found in a high-end gaming PC – quite a feat for a console. Similarly, the NVIDIA graphics accelerator driving the PS3 is about on-par with the present top of the line PCs. Any lead consoles manage over PCs in terms of processing power is usually rarely held for long, but given the highly specialised nature behind the whole console design-philosophy, for gaming, you'll get more bang for your buck: The PS3 will be a respectable gaming system for several years, even compared to a PC.

- HDMI output, HDTV resolutions, and Blu-Ray Disk media standard for all units: There are two disk formats competing for monopoly over the high definition market – HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray Disk. Sony would like Blu-Ray to completely replace DVD as the standard format for movies and games, and PS3 is the platform from which they are launching it. Blu-Ray has significantly more data storage space than normal DVD, and slightly more than HD-DVD, which Sony says will allow studios to add support for more subtitles, directors' commentary, and special features that are already often found on DVD movies, all in high definition for that new HDTV you've got.
Those are among the main features that set the PS3 apart. If you're not in North America or Japan, and you're asking yourself, “Can I buy a PS3?” and you want to know if you can buy a PS3 *now*, then your options are unfortunately limited. While Sony is not likely to go to steps to prevent it, they generally frown upon any efforts that interfere with their marketing strategy, so if you're thinking to buy PS3's from Japan, you may find it difficult. North American and Japanese pre-orders are already sold out, which pretty much leaves only the Ebay option open to you, and that will get *extremely* costly. If you are in America or Japan, then you can always try to pick one up on launch day, but these too will sell quickly. It will also unleash a second wave of third-party overseas sales, at slightly more sensible prices, so if you can bear to wait a few more weeks, this is your best option.