In the absence of absolutely reliable details about price, launch software and, until recently, release date coupled with a list of technical specifications that seems to shift on a daily basis it’s been easy to fall into the belief that the Playstation 3 is a dark figment of somebody else’s imagination. Certainly it’s the case that for a machine that’s now less than six months away from launch there’s been more hearsay, argy-bargy and hopeful speculation floating around the ether than there has been concrete fact. Until now, that is...

Yep, as of this very moment the full Playstation 3 skinny, low-down and unadulterated SP is available direct from the horse’s mouth thanks to a newly launched Official (that’s with a capital ‘O’) Playstation 3 website. Cool!

Well, cool-ish. Coming as it does from Sony it’s all a bit corporate and soulless. It does have numerous large screenshots of the seven first party games that are likely to comprise Sony’s contribution to the starting line-up, lots of oh-so tasteful piccies of the sleek black box itself and a description of the PS3’s technical capabilities in moderately plain English too. Best of all, though, there’s a ‘PS3 at E3’ section brimming with screens and videos of all the games on show plus a forum so you can coo about it all afterwards and maybe form little purchasing groups so that you can eventually afford to buy one of these units.

Speaking of which the site confirms once and for all - we hope - that the PS3 will cost 499 Euros for the 20GB model and 599 Euros for the 60GB model - that's £345 and £414 at today's exchange rates (eek!). There’s no mention of the much discussed other technical disparities between the two units, but maybe that question will be settled in future updates running up to the now verified November 17th launch date. http://eu.playstation.com/ps3/ for more details.