PlayStation 3: It's Got Game

Sony took a gamble in designing the PlayStation 3 around the untested Cell processor and Blu-ray disc storage. But the bet paid off.

If you or someone on your holiday gift list is counting on seeing a Sony (SNE) PlayStation 3 this year, you probably should forget it. The very limited supply of consoles sold out as soon as they became available on Nov. 17, despite lofty price tags of $500 or $600 (the extra $100 triples hard-drive storage, to 60 gigabytes, and adds wireless networking).

The PS3's appeal hits you right out of the box. It has a curved, shiny black case with no external power brick, and it makes Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox 360 console look positively pedestrian. Another big difference is obvious as soon as you turn it on: The PS3 whispers, while the Xbox's cooling fan emits an ill-mannered roar.

The heart of the PS3 is the Cell Broadband Engine, developed jointly by Sony, Toshiba (TOSBF), and IBM (IBM). It crams nine processors onto a single chip barely a half-inch square. Designed for low-power consumption and primed for computationally intense chores such as high-resolution graphics, the Cell chip will eventually be used for many tasks other than games. IBM is building a supercomputer for the Los Alamos National Laboratory using more than 16,000 Cells.