PlayStation 3 – Seventh Generation Gaming Experience

The PlayStation 3 is the third installment of Video gaming consoles manufactured by Sony Computer Entertainment, and is the successor of the PlayStation2. Major competitors for the PS3 in the market are the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 as the seventh generation of gaming consoles.

One of the major features distinguishing the PlayStation 3 from earlier version and predecessors is its unique online gaming through the PlayStation Network, rather than relying on game developers for providing online game play in their games. The other major features which this consoles offers are use of the high optical Blu-ray disc format as its primary medium, connectivity with the PlayStation portable along with excellent multimedia capabilities.

The PS3 was launched in Japan in November 11, 2006, followed by launch in North America on November 17, 2006 and March 2007 in Europe and Oceania. Two versions of the PS3 were available at the time of launch i.e. a basic 20GB hard drive model and another 60GB hard drive model with some additional features. The 20 GB model was not launched in Europe and Oceania. The launch of the PS3 led to various cases of violence among the buyers due to low availability on its opening.

Today there are five versions of the PS3 available today which are referred to by the sizes of their hard disk drives i.e. the 20GB version, 40GB version, 60GB version, 80 GB version and 160GB version. All packages include one Dualshock 3 controller or one or two sixaxis controllers, a mini USB and USB cable, video/audio output, one Ethernet cable and one power cable. The models support the formats for the earlier versions of PlayStation like the PS and the PS2, but this has diminished with launch of newer versions.