At the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing in Tokyo, Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutagari, made the offical announcement that the PS3 has been delayed untill Nov. 2006. The reason for the delay was due to "Blu-ray spec finalization."

The current plan is to do a worldwide release in Nov. and plans on producing atleast 1 million consoles a month in order to keep the supply channels full. Thier goal is to ship 6 million units by March 2007.

Kutagari, also announced the PS3 would feature a Xbox Live style online service. The basic service will be free and allow online play, with additional services available for a fee. There is even mention of the possibilty of being able to sell ingame items to other players, similar to Sony's Player Exchange service for Everquest 2.

The PS3 will also use a 60 gig Hard Disk Drive (HDD) loaded with the Linux operating system. Sony is urging game developers to design games assuming the HDD is installed in every PS3, but has not decided whether to include the HDD pre-installed or sold as a peripheral. If the HDD is not pre-installed this will mean gamers will immidiatly be required to purchase one in order to even play many games.

All PS3 games will be on Blu-ray disk format in order to prevent bootleging, but the PS3 will still play DVDs and CDs and will be backward compatible with both PS2 and PS1 games.

Source: Gamespot