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Users have been confirming various features of the PS3 that were not certain or not even public knowledge prior to the Japanese launch. Here is a quick round up of some of these recently discovered or confirmed features:

• The PSP will have PS1 emulation and downloadable games via a connection to a PS3. The Japanese online PS3 site confirms the downloadable content – see this site for a list of the games available right now in Japan. Expect a sligtly different list to be be made available for each region.
• The PS3 manual describes the steps for a consumer to replace or upgrade the internal HDD in the PS3 – without voiding the warranty. This is a huge plus for consumers, and puts the PS3 ahead of the XBox360 which requires some warranty-voiding-modding to upgrade it’s internals. Joystiq have some scans of the manual pages on their site.
• The above Joystiq article and scans from the manual also describe how the rechargable battery in the controller can also be replaced.
• Some of the PS1 and PS2 backcatalog (200 of the thousands available?) may not be 100% compatible with the PS3 – some may play without sound, and some may hang at the menu screens. A firmware upgrade is likely to come soon that willl resolve these issues.
• Some PS3 games may have the ability to record in game action, and then share the action footage with friends online via the online portal. Read this article on Eurogamer about this feature in Killzone.
• The media viewer features ‘live’ icons for video clips that animate – similar to some animated menus on DVDs. See a video of the features in action here on the Gizmodo site.

Saturday was the big day in Japan for the PS3 launch, and thousands waited in the rain for their chance to get hold of the new PS3 console on day 1. Some stores instead of selling to ‘first come, first served’ handed out raffle tickets – even if you were amongst the first in line you still may not have got a new console if you didn’t get a winning ticket.

This Friday is the big day for the US, where limited preorders for the PS3 already sold within minutes, and demand is also expected to be high. Sony are expecting to ship 100,000 consoles a week to stores, so hopefully if you can’t get hold of one on day one then there will be more coming in the next few weeks.

It will be interesting to see how the battle of the next gen consoles plays out in the coming months – XBox360 have already got a year head start, but this doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone. The new Nintendu Wii is also going to launch a few days after the PS3, also at a respectable price of $199, which could really mix up the battle between the 360 and the PS3. Microsoft will also be adding the external HD-DVD player for the 360, but at an additional $199, this puts the 360 in the same price category as the high end PS3 if you are also looking to gain a next-gen hidef DVD player in your console.