LEIPZIG – THE FUTURE IS OURS!

Good news at last for any PS3 owners who may be beginning to wonder whether their shiny black console was going to live up to the bright future promised for it. As you will know by now, Sony have unveiled their latest plans for the PS3 and PSP at the Leipzig Games Convention in Germany today, and the upshot is some pretty damn cool stuff.

Sony’s pledge (and indeed justification for the higher price tag) back in March that the PS3 would be a total home entertainment hub – for games, films, music and TV – is now that bit nearer to being a reality. It’s a hugely exciting prospect: anyone who’s got Sky+ already will tell you that it’s changed their lives, so being able to use your PS3 for recording and pausing live HD telly is a huge bonus for the PS3 owner, taking the console into the category of a totally must-have piece of kit at last.

The PSP announcements are also getting us as excited as kids on Christmas Day too. Not only will you now be able to watch your recorded programmes on the go remotely, but you can use it as a sat-nav and video and voice messenger too, turning the handheld PlayStation into everything you need on-the-go. Then, on top of all that, there’s its properly revolutionary video on demand service with BSkyB, so you can download top content to your PSP too. At the time of writing, no announcements have been made concerning the PSP’s tea-making ability.

The new announcements are certain to have a massive impact on not only the games industry, but also the video industry and the mobile phone industry too – let’s face it, mobile games are never going to be as good as PSP games, so now the PSP can offer Wi-Fi communications and GPS on a smart (and slim-line) bit of kit, why use anything else?

And it’s totally going to change the way we think about and use our games consoles too – not to mention finally making the missus understand why we love our PlayStations so much. After six months of playing catch-up, Sony have done the smart thing and given the PlayStation 3 a vital and sustainable purpose beyond pure gaming. Now when anyone asks the question, ‘What’s the point of getting a PS3 when other consoles are cheaper?’, just tell them to feel the quality and the width.