The PlayStation 3 had a very difficult childhood. When Sony finally gave birth to the finished console in November 2006, it was extremely expensive and frankly, it wasn't a great product.
Sure, it was powerful, it was backwards compatible with PS2 games and it had a built-in Blu-ray player. But still, the price was totally unjustifiable for many people, and that was reflected in the embarrassingly weak sales figures.
Nearly 18 months later, and the PS3 is now a completely different animal. The 60GB and 40GB versions have been retired, and (in the UK, at least) we're left with a console with 80GB storage, less USB ports, no memory card slots at all and no backwards compatibility.
But crucially, it's £125 cheaper than the original – with a game too, in many places. And despite the bits of hardware that have been stripped off the 80GB version, it's still a far better console than when the 60GB launched in 2006.
That's mostly down to the regular firmware upgrades that Sony has been issuing since then. Bugs have been fixed. Oodles of features have been added. And the PlayStation 3 is now a console which can genuinely be considered at the very least, an equal to the Xbox 360. In many ways, it's a lot better.
Read our full review of the new Sony PlayStation 3 80GB
