The release of the Playstation 3, or PS3 as it is known, has sparked a mini crime wave in America and has generated windfall profits for those who have managed to get their hands on one of the 400,000 gaming machines released in North America in mid-November.

The launch of the PS3 in Japan on November 11th resulted in thousands of people queuing up at retail outlets across the country (see picture), but nowhere was the “pre-game competition” as aggressive as it was in America. There were several armed robberies and assaults outside and inside stores.

In Toronto, enterprising street people, who normally make their home sleeping in shop doorways, turned a tidy profit by holding places in the queue for up to two days for would-be buyers. One entrepreneurial homeless man called Doug reportedly made more than $4,000 by subcontracting and getting more than 20 homeless friends to queue outside a downtown Toronto store, holding spots for would-be customers.

With the PS3 not due for release in Europe until March ‘07 the machines are selling briskly at more than double their retail price on eBay. So what’s it all about? Why has the PS3 sparked a frenzy in the gaming world?

The PS3 is an advanced computer system that serves as a platform to enjoy the next generation of in-home entertainment and gaming.  It involves the combination of Cell and RSX processors. Having giga-bit Ethernet and a pre-installed hard drive, PS3 users will be able to download a variety of content as well as accessing online games and services over the network.

Equipped with basic input/output ports, the PS3 supports a broad range of displays from conventional NTSC/PAL standard TVs to the latest full HD (1080i/1080p) flat panel displays, offering the joy of the most advanced computer entertainment contents to homes around the world. 

As usual with the arrival of new hardware, the selection of new games will be limited for the first few months but the PS3 is based on open and publicly available programming codes, which means that third party games will eventually begin to appear on the marketplace. Sony has signed several sublicensing agreements to encourage software development.

In the gaming world, being first to market has its advantages, but it also has some downsides. With its Xbox 360, Microsoft has staked itself a one year lead over archrival Sony in the gaming wars and, just as importantly, the battle for living-room supremacy.

These powerful boxes do double duty as digital media hubs. In addition to the built-in memory card reader on the 60GB model, the PS3 can read digital photos from a variety of USB-attached devices, including most digital cameras, the PSP, USB flash drives, and home-burned CD-Rs.

A few different slide show styles are available, including a unique “photo album” view.  When stored internally on the hard drive (copying back and forth is easy), photos appear rapidly, and in the basic slide-show mode, you can easily advance and reverse your slides Most JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and PNG images should work just fine.

By contrast, the Xbox 360 lacks both an internal media reader and the impressive photo album viewer, and the Nintendo Wii - while including some cool and fun photo-viewing and manipulation functionality - includes only a built-in SD card reader.

As for music, the PS3 supports most of the major music-file types, including MP3, ATRAC, AAC, and WAV, and like the Xbox 360, has a built-in music visualiser. You can import songs from a flash memory card or a USB thumb drive or rip songs directly to the hard drive from a CD. Unlike some Blu-ray players on the market, the PS3 can actually recognise and play CDs. While the PS3 even plays Sony’s SACD discs, it cannot play back music from attached iPods, nor can it stream from other music players that incorporate copy-protected music formats.

On the video front, the PS3 plays Blu-ray discs in full high-definition as well as DVD movies. It also supports MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4/h.264 video files from flash, USB, or disc-based media.  So it’s not difficult to justify purchasing a PS3 given its multi-entertainment capability.

So, beneath all the hype and advertising, is the PS3 worth the $100 to $200 more than the Xbox 360?  Strictly, from a gaming perspective, the quick answer is: no, not yet, at least. It’ll be at least a year before game developers really start to get the most out of the PS3, and right now, compared to Xbox 360 the selection of PS3 games is pretty limited.

As an all in one media centre the PS3 is impressive. The downside is that the PS3 will be in such short supply in the months ahead, you probably won’t be able to get one - at least at the suggested retail price. 

The good news is by the time you get your hands on one, Sony will have already made some improvements and added new features and the selection of games will have grown considerably.