In the time leading up to the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3), the price of the PlayStation 3 was highly speculated. Even here at GameDaily we took a look at the price in our first two features, Paying the PS3 Price I and II. The price was always speculated as being high, but people hoped that Sony had an ace up its sleeve and the PS3 would retail at or below the price of the Xbox 360. However, at E3 2006, Sony dropped a bomb when the company casually informed a room full of press that the PlayStation 3 would launch with two SKUs at $499.99 and $599.99 respectively.

When the announcement was first made, the only differences shown between the two SKUs were the size of the hard drive. The lower priced SKU would come packaged with a 20GB hard drive, while the higher priced SKU would come with a 60GB hard drive. So at first, our reaction was of pure shock. Paying $100 for 40GB of storage space was simply laughable. However, after taking a look at the press release issued by Sony, it became clear that the lower priced model was lacking many key features of the higher priced version.

The $500 PlayStation 3 will be lacking wireless internet capabilities (although a separate adapter will likely be available around launch time), it will not support SD cards, Memory Sticks or Compact Flash cards, and it will not support HDMI video output without the purchase of an adapter. When you move up to the $600 PS3 console, you will get all of these features out of the box, as well as a 60GB hard drive instead of the 20GB hard drive, included in the $500 model.

With the Xbox 360, most people wanted the higher priced SKU because almost all of the additional features were things that would probably be bought sometime in the future. Therefore there has been minimal demand for the $300 Xbox 360 SKU in comparison to the $400 SKU. While some would like to look at the dual-SKU PlayStation 3 setup in the same way, it's really not the same at all.

When the dual-SKU announcement was made, most potential PS3 owners were upset that the lower-priced SKU did not include HDMI support out of the box. At that time, it seemed that the only way to get HD quality visuals out of your Blu-Ray movies was to use an HDMI output. However, since that time it has become clear that either Sony will offer a proprietary AV output device that will include HDMI support, or you will not need HDMI to view Blu-Ray content in 720p or 1080i resolutions. Either way, both models of the PlayStation 3 will have the same HD output capabilities in terms of viewing Blu-Ray content in HD. With that said, let's take a look at the differences between the two SKUs once again.

At $500 you won't be able to connect your console wirelessly to your home network. Online gaming works best from a wired connection, and if you picked up an Xbox 360 for $400 you still had to pay an additional $100 for the wireless adapter. No one wants to run cords across their house, but there are other alternatives. Instead of putting the wireless router in the room with your computer, put it in the room with your big screen where the PS3 will be. It's much cheaper to pick up a wireless adapter for your PC than it is to buy the higher priced PS3 model, and it's not that hard to hide a cable modem and router behind your home entertainment center.

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