PS3 weighty with pleasure

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is one heavy piece of computing equipment—literally and figuratively.

But although heavy, and larger than even the original PlayStation 2 unit, the PS3 has a sleek profile, and its weight means it can stand on end without danger of toppling.

There are no obvious buttons on the PS3. The On/Off and Eject buttons are actually built into the skin of the machine, so simply pressing at the proper spot will make things happen. Of course, the only time you’ll be touching the console is when inserting and ejecting discs, because you can switch the PS3 itself on and off using the wireless controllers.

For the PS3, the rumble feature has been dropped from the new SIXAXIS controller in favour of an internal gyro that can detect pitch, yaw, and roll. Although without the rumble you won’t be feeling the attacks of your enemy, you will be able to fly your fighter by moving and rotating the controller. No rumble feature also means that, even with a built-in lithium-ion rechargeable battery, the controller is light as a feather.

In addition to having a larger hard drive than the 20-gigabyte version of the PS3, the 60-gig unit also has more card-reading and input capabilities, including CompactFlash, SD, and Sony’s own proprietary Memory Stick. You can also connect peripheral devices such as MP3 players and digital cameras using the USB ports.

The console’s operating system is the same XrossMediaBar that Sony developed for the PSP. The interface takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve zipped around for a bit, you won’t have any trouble figuring out where to go to access video, audio, games, or the PlayStation Network, the on-line community that gives you access to game downloads, your friends list, and the PlayStation Store.

The PlayStation Store isn’t that easy to navigate. It’s slow to respond, and at times I wasn’t sure which category I was in. There isn’t—yet—a wealth of downloadable content either, although given the content archives that Sony has access to (music, film, television, and games), you can expect that to change fast.

The system can accommodate all 12-centimetre optical discs, including CDs, DVDs, and the new, high-definition–capacity Blu-ray Discs. Because the PS3 has a PS2 chip set built in, you won’t need software patches to play your old games, either. Having a PS3 in your entertainment centre means your old PS2 is surplus. Donate it to a deserving kid.

The PS3 was designed to connect to your handheld PSP—a feature that is rich with promise; imagine using the PSP as a rearview mirror while you play a driving game on your PS3—but despite my repeated attempts to take advantage of the Remote Play functionality, I could not get the machines to interface. I was, however, able to upload a game demo from the PS3 to my PSP using a USB connection.

Sony had some problems meeting the demand for PS3s during the holiday season but claims to have shipped a total of one million consoles since the launch of the system on November 17. If you’ve saved up your gift certificates, now’s the time to cash them in.