Am heading to Toronto later today. The PlayStation division of Sony Canada has a big launch party and media briefing happening there on Thursday, in advance of Friday’s launch of the new PlayStation 3 gaming console.

I spent some time with the machine last week, and can confirm that it’s a sweet machine.

The price tag is going to be hard for some to understand, but remember that the computing power of the PS3 is arguably greater than three of the computers sitting on your desk. Put in those terms, the price is not steep.

Whether you can justify that cost for a computer that – despite continued efforts by all the console manufacturers to change this – is only used for playing video-games, well that’s another debate entirely.