If you’re thinking of saving up the money to buy a Playstation 3 at launch, you might want to start now. European retailer Play.com is offering the Playstation 3 for a pre-order bundle with the 60 GB HDD and 3 games - Warhawk, Singstar, and Formula One - for the equivalent of about $1,000 US dollars. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many other sites with prices and bundle offers listed, so it’s not clear yet whether this will be the norm for large retailers like Target and Amazon.com.

Personally, we could see this going either way for Sony. One possibility is that the PS3 will be this year’s must-have Christmas item, and people will be willing to shell out over a grand just to get the system (even if it comes with some games they don’t want), meaning retailers will make a killing. On the other hand, this could further add to the negative reaction that Sony’s been receiving for the price of their console, and could push gamers towards cheaper alternatives like the Xbox 360, Wii, or even a new desktop PC.