Playstation 3 is one of the most powerful gaming consoles ever built and is also one of the most expensive ones as well. This video game system is produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and also rivals the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. The playstation 3 was released to the US gaming market in mid November in the fall of 06’. In 2007, there will be no new gaming systems for the holidays; it will still be these big three.

What gave the playstation 3 its power? This gaming system is the capable of playing in high definition and has the Blu-ray Disc media storage system. Blu-ray is one of the most powerful media technologies available. This lead to the playstation’s extremely high costs of around $600 in the US. It actually costs the manufacturer of playstation over $800 to produce, which gave Sony a $200 loss on each system which they planned covering with the sale of their games.

This year, playstation 3 has reduced the hard drive to 40GB on their new version and has 65nm chips in place to reduce power consumption, hence less heat and a quieter system. Sony has also added an internal battery to keep the time when the system is turned off, which is a practical change. This also reduces the problems that plagued the original playstation 3 since there were many hardware failures and extremely high costs because of this.

If you are a serious gamer, PS3 is probably going to be a good choice. Not only will you be getting the high definition experience, you will also be getting the online play and the computer system built into it. The Xbox 360 rivals playstation in terms of its processing speed and the media system but it has drawbacks. A great benefit of PS3 is the ability to play the old games from the PS2 and PS1. You can play these games, but you have to download them. While the Xbox 360 won’t allow you to play old Xbox games unless you find an emulator of sorts.

Another reason that playstation 3 is for the serious gamers only is because of its serious costs. In the 2007 holiday season, the prices should be about the same as last year. This is not a system that can handle a lot of beatings so you probably won’t want to buy this for small kids. The PS3 and its sensitive hardware wouldn’t be able to handle constant falls off the TV stand or kids falling on it on the floor. Good systems for kids would be old beaters like the original playstation, Nintendo or Sega genesis. The newer Nintendo Wii has been known to work well with gamers of any age and the controllers were built to handle a beating.

The moral of the playstation 3 system is if you are a serious enough gamer to spend over $500, then it will take great care to maintain the system. You will also need to invest in an HDTV to experience the High-Def features. The benefit is you will have the best of the best technology and highest end gaming media out there.