Sony's Father of the PlayStation, Ken Kutaragi, has "promised" a souped up multimedia-focused PlayStation 3 in the guise of an AV component.

The high-end PS3 follows in the footsteps of Sony's PSX, a high-end PS2 featuring hard drive and DVD recording capabilities. The PSX was released in Japan in late 2003, but underwhelming sales saw plans to make it available elsewhere shelved indefinitely.

The PS3 is barely a month old but it faces stiff competition from Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's newly released Wii. The Wii has become the fastest selling next-generation video games console ever, selling over a million units in just two weeks - despite reports of Sony Computer Entertainment America executives dismissing the Wii as a "novelty".{moscomment}