We all heard the announcement at Sony’s pre-E3 press event: the PlayStation 3 will reach retail shelves on November 17th with a suggested retail of $599 for a fully loaded system and $499 for a core system. There were also several games to play on the show floor all three days of E3 2006. So, with the truth pretty much out there, how does the PS3 stack up?

As many of you know, I expended the entire media-early-access period and more on day one of the show at Nintendo’s massive Wii (check that out here ) demonstration area. Good thing too. It was packed the entire show with two-plus hour waits. After being so thoroughly impressed by Wii and its games, I kind of tiptoed around the show, afraid everything else would disappointment me. I walked by the Sony booth several times as I made my rounds of appointments. I kept trying to screw up my courage and go in to play what is the most technically advanced console of the next generation, but could not quite do it during the first two days of the show. Finally, on the third and final day of the show, I took the plunge and dove headfirst into the midst of the PS3 demonstration stations. In the days between then and now I have turned over what I saw and experienced and I am now ready to share.

First off, I have to give credit to Sony for one thing this year – honesty. Now after the whole “yeah, that Killzone video represents real gameplay” lie of E3 2005, it is a little strange to laud Sony for honesty. But this E3 they did something that really breaks convention. The PS3 game demonstrations were in banks of four per game and in between the second and third games was a glass case with PS3 development units running the games. There was absolutely no pretext that these games were somehow already running on real PS3s. Long have companies, including Nintendo and their Wii this year, had displays that had huge breadboards running games within a hidden cabinet while a mockup of the case sat out with the game being demonstrated to give the illusion that the consumer hardware was running the code. It’s a nice change for Sony to be so in-your-face with the real facts.

As far as the hardware goes, the case of the PS3 looks (as far as I can tell) exactly like it did at E3 2005. Sony has now officially announced that the case color at release will be black. As the pioneer of vertical orientation of game systems Sony of course designed the PS3 so it can sit either horizontal or vertical while in operation. If you loved the more compact size of the PS2 over the Xbox, I’ve got some bad news for you. The PS3’s physical dimensions are near identical to the Xbox 360 and at 11 pounds is significantly heavier.

The controller looks like the ubiquitous Dual Shock that millions of gamers have come to know and love. Those who saw last year’s prototype “boomerang” controller and freaked out, can now relax. The big changes are on the inside. The controller’s vibration function that gave the player some tactile feedback is now gone. (Probably due to Sony losing its lawsuit with Immersion Corp.) In its place is a tilt-sensing mechanism. Ever seen a novice gamer try to actually turn and tilt the controller in a vain effort to control the game? Well now all that turning and tilting will actually do something on screen … if the game is set up to take advantage of that function. Only one game at the Sony booth actually used the tilt function at this time.

By now I’m sure you’re screaming at your computer screen and asking. “What about the games?! Are they awesome?! Do they look like I’m playing a computer-animated movie like last year’s Killzone video would have us think?” The short answer is kind of, “No.” There were several nice games on the floor, but none of them really impressed me as being any better than the Xbox 360 games I had already seen and definitely offered nothing new in gameplay. Warhawk, the only game on the floor to actually took advantage of the tilt function of the controller, controlled well enough but I found myself wanting to use the left joystick to control the plane rather than having to consciously tilt the controller out in front of me. It’s a nice gimmick, but it has not yet been made an integral and desirable feature in a game.

Now hold onto your hats for some real shockers: the differences between the $599 PS3 and the $499 PS3, hereinafter referred to as the $600 and $500 models. Looking at the Sony specification sheet for the two models, the first thing that jumps out at the casual reader is the size of the hard drive: $600 = 60GB – $500 = 20GB. Okay, many of us never even filled up the 8GB of the Xbox, so no big deal, right? Looking further we come to port differences: $600 = x1 HDMI output, MemoryStick/SD/CompactFlash I/O cards – $500 = none of these. Communications differences: $600 = IEEE 802.11 b/g – $500 = S.O.L..

Now let’s just back that up a minute. The $500 model of the PS3 will not have the best signal hookup for advanced TVs. It will not be able to read solid state memory cards. It will not be able to connect to your home wireless network! And unlike the addition of a separately-purchased hard drive giving core buyers of the Xbox 360 all the functionality of those that got a premium console, Sony has announced no way for $500 model buyers to upgrade to $600 model functionality. As of right now, we have to assume that if you buy the $500 model you are going to be permanently stuck with a retarded version of the hardware, making the $600 version the only logical choice to buy. This means that for all intents and purposes the $500 does not exist and the $600 model is the only one that can be considered.

Taking the $600 model as the only real PS3, the next question should be, “Is the $600 PS3 50 percent better than the $400 Xbox 360?” From what I saw at E3 2006, the answer is a resounding, “NO!” The games shown were roughly equal in visuals and sound and offered nothing really new in gameplay.

Now you might consider the fact that the PS3 has a Blu-ray disc drive and will play high-definition movies in your value calculations, but if you are like me, you really don’t like putting the wear on your system to play movies. It is first and only to play games. Now if you don’t mind putting the wear on your system, and have an HDTV, the Blu-ray capabilities of the PS3 could be a big draw, as stand-alone Blu-ray players are very expensive.