Congratulations, Sony. You've invalidated the Blu-Ray format for movies and ensured that no 3rd party will be making games that can run natively in 1080p ever, all in one go.

For the three of your left that aren't in the know, the PS3 is being priced in a two-SKU setup, as follows:

$500 version - 20GB hard drive, no support for WiFi, memory sticks or HDMI.

$600 version - 60GB hard drive, all those cool features not present in the $500 version.

Personally, I'm going to be getting the $500 version. Why? Because Sony has ensured that, with the $500 version not being upgradable at all, 3rd parties will never use the extra features that the $600 version offers. Think about it? How many light gun games come out? What games other than DDR use the DDR mats? Where's all that incredible EyeToy support? Simply put, 3rd parties hate to waste time and fragment the audience by adding stuff to their games that a very large portion of their potential audience won't have. This is why Nintendo had to make the Wii remote standard instead of peripheral, and it's also why you'll never see a PS3 game from a 3rd party developer (the only developers who matter, as far as the PlayStation brand is concerned) in 1080p. The memory stick and PSP connection stuff can be resolved with a USB connection to the PSP, but 1080p is out of the question now.

This also invalidates the Blu-Ray format as a next-generation movie format. With the less expensive version of the PS3 incapable of rendering 1080p and standalone Blu-Ray players costing well over a grand (compared to $500 low-end HD-DVD players), there's no way that the Blu-Ray can take off. Remember, Sony was counting on the PS3 to push Blu-Ray into the home. With 1080p out of the picture, the Blu-Ray has become the next UMD: a proprietary game distribution format, nothing more.

As for the hard drive... I have no intention of partaking in digital distribution until 100Mbps connections are available under $50/month, so there's nothing else I'd be doing with the extra 40GB anyway, though I must admit I'm amused that the $500 PS3 is going to have less hard drive space than the PS2 hard drive that came with FFXI (which was 40GB).

The price points themselves are also rediculous. If it weren't for Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII, I wouldn't get the system at all. What they showed at the press conference was not $200 better than the 360 (core to core or premium to premium). As it stands, I'll be waiting for launch hysteria to die down, and maybe even longer, before I pick up the PS3, and when I do, it'll be the version that's going to actually be supported - the $500 version.

Good job, Sony, you destroyed yourselves in one night.