One of the more disturbing items that people were complaining about on the PS3 controller is the fact that the lithium-ion battery inside is not accessible in case it needs replacing. This led some sources to believe that gamers would be forced to shell out for a new controller at thios point.

However, it looks like this will not be the case. According to a Sony spokesperson when queried by gi.biz those stories are all speculative and largely untrue. "The latest generation of Lithium Polymer batteries hardly suffer any memory effect at all, so it'll be many years before there's any degradation in terms of battery performance."

The spokesperson went on to confirm, "When and if this happens, then of course we will be providing a service to exchange these items."

Considering how many charges these batteries can take it will need a lot of heavy duty gaming to kill one of these things. Charging is easily taken care of using the USB cable included with the PS3.

The suggested retail price on the SixAxis controller is $49.99 US. No price point has been set as of yet for the UK/ European markets.