The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a game console from Sony Computer Entertainment. It was presented in May 2005 as the official successor of the PlayStation 2 at the E3 in Los Angeles.
PlayStation 3 was launched in Japan on November 11, 2006, in North America on November 17, 2006, and in Europe on March 23, 2007. As a console of the so-called seventh generation, it competes with Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Besides its function as a video game platform, the PS3 is also able to play audio CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Other music, video, and video files of different formats can be played back and copied from the internal hard drive, external media, or DLNA-compliant media server through the network ports.
In September 2009 the Slim version of the PlayStation 3 was released, which was lighter, thinner and cheaper than the original version. A super slim version, but an optically and technically revised model of the PlayStation 3, was released in September 2012.
