In various interviews with both Phil Harisson and Ken Kutaragi it seems to have been confirmed the PlayStation 3 will be region free when it comes to games. This is good news to those who look to import titles that may not be released in their region.

However, it looks like things won't quite be hi-def ready out of the box. According to interviews with Kaz Hirai and Ken Kutaragi we won't be seeing component cables included with the PS3. Kaz said he wasn't sure but thought the answer would be "no". Meantime Kutaragi would not commit to an answer but was leaning towards no as well. He was being hounded by PR staff that kept him from answering certain questions- probably a good idea considering what we've heard in past interviews.

It's been awhile since hearing it but i do recall seeing articles about possibly shifting the region coding specs a bit.

BTW, I thought my "in regards to games" made it pretty clear that didn't portend to movies.

I get a feeling that the UK may get "shafted again" come next year when we'll only get the 20gig system and the 60 gig model will follow later on the back end off the summer

Going through some of the newsgroups it also may look like when you buy the 20gig system you just get the bare bones of the PS3 and will be up to the re-sellers/retailers to bundle games & movies, uping that systems price. But with the 60gig model it may be bundled with a demo disc, game (choice of 3) and a BR movie (choice of 3) before the re-sellers/retailers get it.

As for the regional free thing, I'm a bit concern on that as the whole idea of the regional blocking was to keep content & classification of material in control for different countries. e.g. a film like The Devil's Rejects would be released in the USA, UK, Japan and the main parts of Europe as a Rated & Unrated film. But in places like Austraila, New Zeland, India & Mexico they would only have a Rated version due to there strict control of "portrait violence" and "religious content"

Now that the basic PS3 has a HDMI slot, I must admit that I am shifting towards it as a system of choice, bearing in mind that as soon as they start allowing PS3 games to be downloaded, even the 60GB hard drive starts looking small. I just cant see huge file downloads for games as your average Joe has only got 0.5 to 2MB broadband at the moment and it would take hours to download a 1GB of extras for a game... just look how long a 100MB demo takes on Xbox Live at the moment. The game companies are always going to provide content that the vast majority of their customers can buy, otherwise their is no payback.

Without game downloads, I think 20GB will be fine. Within a few months 3rd party companies will be offering massive hard drives for the system anyway that will make 60GB sound silly.

I have my broadband network router wired rather than wireless and the cable is sitting there ready for it right now. And as for the ability to use all the memory slots, my USB memory stick will do nicely thanks.

Honestly, I think its time to start pushing the lower end PS3 as the system of choice for the majority of gamers.

If they drop the price by the same amount as they have just done in Japan for us Europeans as a thank you, then I could almost forgive them for taking the p*ss out of us so often.

Something that I missed when reading Lyndons original story was that the above quote kind of implies that they STILL are not actually making PS3's yet.

Phil Harrison was also quoted as saying that the version of the operating system he demonstrated to the press in Japan a couple of days ago was a work in progress... again this doesn't fill me with confidence.

Anyway, enough of the Conspiracy Theories.

Regarding "not being fussed about all the extras", I guess my point is that unless they do indeed bundle a free movie, game, or extra controller, memory card, remote, high def cable.... or something, then it is indeed a lot to pay for a wireless card inside the console and a tiny bit more hard drive space (in today's terabit terms).

Am I right int thinking that Sony have never actually confirmed the UK price for the console ? I cant find anything official anywhere.

Actually that line pertains to whether the component cables would be included. It does make it sounds somewhat iffy on manufacture though, doesn't it?

As for official UK price announcements the most offiial i could find was Sony UK managing director Ray Maguire saying that would be it during an interview with Eurogamer.