No Hard Drive Included With PS3

But there is talk that Sony's new console will take standard 2.5-inch drives.

For the PlayStation 3 to truly be the "entertainment supercomputer" Sony insists it will be, it's going to need some sort of external storage, but the latest reports out of Japan suggest that you're going to have to pay extra for that.

PlayStation 3 will include support for an add-on hard drive, much like Xbox 360, but unlike Microsoft's console PlayStation 3 will not ship with the hard drive as standard, according to a report at IGN.

Leaving out the hard drive would have two important consequences.

Developers will not be able to assume that PlayStation 3 owners will have a hard drive, meaning that they won't be able to design games to use the hard drive by default for features such as caching of game content.

Also, PlayStation 3 owners will have fork out more money if they want to take advantage of all that the console has to offer, which is not insignificant in light of recent estimates that the PlayStation 3 will be more expensive at launch than the PlayStation 2 was when it debuted.

Interestingly, there are rumblings that Sony is considering using standard 2.5-inch hard drives for PlayStation 3, meaning that any appropriately sized drive would work with the console.

Sony has not confirmed the report in Famitsu and has declined to comment on whether the PlayStation 3 will or will not include the hard drive.

September's Tokyo Game Show should bring clarity as Sony is expected to show off some of the PlayStation 3 launch titles and to reveal more details about the console's release.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games