Sony launched its latest fray into the already crowded next-gen gaming world on November 17.

The launch comes after a seemingly long, arduous and delayed development and production process.

While the XBox 360 and Wii have had successes of their own, the Playstation 3’s plan for success is all about new technology. The PS3 uses the new Blu-ray discs which can currently hold 50 GB of data. It also comes standard with either a 20 GB hard drive or a 60 GB hard drive and a built in Wi-Fi adapter.

Perhaps the most exciting feature is the PS3’s new processor: the Cell Broadband Engine, which, according to Sony’s Web site, is 40 times faster than the Playstation 2’s processor. The processor works by having 8 seperate “cores” work together in a process called “parallel processing.”

The PS3 will have quite a battle to reach the same massive sales it enjoyed (and is still enjoying) with the PS2. At launch, only about 200,000 consoles were available. Also, Microsoft has learned from the mistakes of their first XBox while Nintendo has created what could be the most innovative game system ever with the Wii. It will be interesting to see how Sony’s 3rd party support (traditionally very strong) propels or sinks the PS3.