It may not be reaching UK shops until March but, miracle of miracles, we’ve managed to get our hands on a PlayStation 3. Which, as you can imagine, caused a flurry of excitement. And this is what we’ve discovered about it so far.

Actually, first a note of caution. Our PS3, according to Sony, is an early version of the so-called debug machine. Indeed, it has a sticker on it that says: “Prototype”. Apparently, there is stuff missing from it which will be in the final machines, such as the ability to play Blu-ray movies and act as a repository for your music and photographs. Final debug machines, though, are a matter of weeks away, we’re told.

There’s no doubt that the PS3 is a classy piece of kit, with its piano-black finish and chrome strip (which denotes a PS3 with a 60Gb hard disk, so that will become a status symbol among PS3 owners). It’s also bloody heavy and pretty large - a function of having the power supply built in. Which becomes apparent when you plug it in using the kettle-lead. Our machine came with a controller, a network cable, a mini-USB to normal USB cable (for charging the controller) and a Component Video lead for attachment to a TV (alas, no HDMI cable).

Like the PS2, the PS3 has a power on/off rocker switch on the back. Next to the Blu-ray disk slot are two touch-sensitive buttons, one for ejecting disks and one for power on/off. When you initially plug the PS3 in, it has two LEDs next to the on-off touch-button which glow red; touch the button and one lights blue and the other green, which is pretty snazzy. Grab a disk, push it part-way into the slot and it’s sucked smoothly into the console’s innards.

Tap the new PlayStation button in the middle of the controller, and it communicates with the PS3; one of four numbered LEDs lights up to tell you its destination (the days of Multi-Taps are well and truly behind us). The controller itself is stunningly light, thanks to the absence of rumble hardware; the triggers and bumpers have been redesigned, too. The triggers, notably, are bigger, with much longer travel and analogue response.

And you’re in - to the PS3’s front-end, the Cross-Media Bar. Which looks exactly like the PSP’s front-end. After signing in (the PS3 supports multiple users), the menu choices you get are, from left to right: Users, Settings, Photo, Music, Video, Game, Network and Friends. Below Friends, on our prototype at least, is an icon marked: ‘Sign up for PlayStation Network’. Games are simply launched by selecting the game icon and hitting X.

And that’s what the PS3 is like. As soon as we get the chance to check out the PlayStation Network and start downloading music, photos and so on to the hard disk, we’ll report back. At the moment, we have preview versions of Resistance: Fall of Man (which is excellent - quite hard, with some very interesting weaponry), MotorStorm (very good, but only at the demo stage) and Genji (rather disappointing). But we’re working hard to get more games, and will soon bring you a round-up giving our impressions of early PS3 software. But one thing is for sure: the PS3 is over here, and preparing to make its presence felt.