Playstation 3 to be released

Last Modified: 22 Mar 2007
By: Benjamin Cohen

The new Playstation 3 has been touted as the future of gaming and is available in the shops from midnight tonight.

Some hardcore fans have already been queuing for over 24 hours to get their hands on it.

In the States it's £100 cheaper and in Japan it's almost half the price at £253

In fact, they have been waiting for months. The games console was originally scheduled for a pre-Christmas launch, but Sony were forced to delay because of manufacturing problems.

The machine is also much more expensive than its rivals. Despite the problems, these fans were excited at the prospect of taking one home.

Well it is quite expensive, Sony's Ceo said it's the Mercedes of the video game market. It's more expensive than the surprise hit console the Nintendo wii.

It also costs more here than in other countries

British gamers will pay £425 compared to £399 in France and Germany.

In the States it's £100 cheaper and in Japan it's almost half the price at £253.

There is a cheaper version of the console with less memory, but it's not being sold in Britain.

Sony says the price is higher here because it costs more to do business here. But it may face problems from the EU for charging uk consumers more than our French cousins.

It's not just Sony that has been accused of over-charging, Apple has also faced an investigation by the EU after it emerged that British music lovers have been barred from accessing the French version of itunes which costs around 14 percent less for tracks.

It has been quite considerably delayed in Europe after manufacturing problems with the blue ray DVD player element.

But Sony says the fact it has a built in a next generation Blue Ray dvd player, means it's better than the Nintendo wii, it's actually about £300 cheaper than a standalone blue ray player. It's also got better graphics than a wii.

Fans are not very happy that it is not as good as the US model, because it lacks a chip to play old Playstation games.

In the UK, gamers will need to manually upgrade software to play some, but not all, old games.

However if you don't have an internet connection, you can't upgrade.

Some experts have predicted a price drop in time for Christmas when Sony will aim to win back the family market from Nintendo.