The PS3 was originally released back in late 2006 and has sold over 43.4million units worldwide since launch. There have been 2 versions of the PS3 since it was released.

The now discontinued larger model, which used more power, created more heat and more noise. This model was replaced back in August 2009 with a much slimmer and more streamline model simply known as the PS3 Slim.

The PS3’s main selling points include

• Its FREE online gaming service
• PlayStation Network, or PSN comes in 2 versions. Free and a paid subscription of up to £39.99 a year. The subscription based services has advantages such as, first access to demos, discounted games, DLC (Downloadable Content), music, game and movie trailers. Both of which, allow Online Multi-player
  
• Its Multimedia Capabilities, which give the user the ability to create photo albums from removable storage media and have these images saved on the internal hard drive. Home movies can also be stored in the same way
• DVD playback is also possible and if connected to at HDTV, the quality of these is improved via the PS3’s ability to upscale content to almost HD. The difference is more than noticeable
• Blu-Ray Discs are the PS3’s primary storage medium, which allows for extra storage for High Definition films, so allows for additional content as well as the increase in quality from Standard Definition to HD, not only in picture quality, but also sound
• The Built-in Wifi allows the user to do away with the unsightly network cables and supports both 802.11 b/g network protocols
• Upgradable 2.5” SATA Hard Drive gives the user complete freedom of storage space capacity
• Playstation Move which allows for precise movement and tracking within a 3D space which, in turn, are accurately tracked back to the game
  

On March 22, 2007, SCE and Stanford University released the Folding@home project for the PlayStation 3. This program allows PS3 owners to lend the computing power of their consoles to help study the physical process of protein folding.

Console Technical Specification

CPU

Cell Broadband Engine

Memory

256 MB XDR RAM, 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM

L2 Cache

512 KB

Graphics

nVidia RSX @ 550 MHz

Internal Storage

2.5″ SATA removable hard drive

Max Resolution

1080p

Game Format

Blu-ray BD-ROM

Controllers

PlayStation Move Sixaxis / DualShock 3 (Bluetooth wireless)

Networking

Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g

Ethernet (RJ45)

Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Other Features

2 USB 2.0 ports

Blu-ray/DVD/CD Player

Up to HDMI 1.3a compatible PlayStation Eye

Bravia Sync XMB control (CEC)

Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreaming

160Gb Sony Playstation 3 Slim Console

RRP: £255.30
Price: £199.99

320Gb Sony Playstation 3 Slim Console

RRP: £291.05
Price: £268.99

Playstation Move Starter Pack

RRP: £54.99
Price: £39.99