During the kick-off of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, Sony unveiled pricing and released dates for their next generation video console Playstation 3. While Microsoft removed the hard drive from the Xbox 360, Sony is adding one, offering two versions of the console for sale. One with a 20GB hard drive for $499 and another one with a 60GB hard drive for $599. Of course, Playstation 3 will come with a Blu-Ray drive out of the box, unlike Microsoft’s half-hearted attempts to no add HD-DVD support to their console.

The thing that is most noteworthy for you, our readers, of course is that with the Playstation 3 we will have a $499 Blu-Ray player in the market when it hits retail on Novemebr 16. The often overstated point that Blu-Ray players are too expensive compared to HD-DVD is therefore no longer valid. At $499, Playstation 3 has the exact same price as a Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player, only that it can do about million other things as well.