Well, this year’s E3 video game show is officially underway in L.A. and Sony kicked off the proceedings with their own pre-E3 press conference which some have described as “underwhelming”. The big thing they did confirm, however, was the launch details for the Playstation 3 console. They say it is on track for a worldwide release in November, with Japan getting the first taste on November 11th, followed by everywhere else on November 17th. Interestingly, it was also announced that every PS3 system will come with a hard drive (in other words, it’s not optional like the X-Box 360’s hard drive). As for the all important price point, here are the proposed packages: $499 US ($549 Cdn) for the 20 GB version, and $599 US ($659 Cdn) for the 60 GB version. (Definitely pricey, as people expected… by comparison, the X-Box 360 is $399 US for a core bundle and $499 US with the 20GB hard drive). But wait, what’s this? The other unexpected bit of news is the fact that the PS3’s weird boomerang controller has been trashed and replaced with a PS2 dual shock controller that has gyro sensors for sensing 6 degrees of motion. Sounds like a last minute attempt to take on Nintendo’s Wii console… but I thought Sony wasn’t interested in gimmicks??