Sony Computer Entertainment introduced its PlayStation 3 gaming console to a crowd of media personnel and industry analysts at its pre-E3 press conference earlier today. Sony’s response is more than likely inspired by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the company’s plans to take Sony’s market share.

Sony has confirmed the official name of its gaming console to be PlayStation 3. According to reports by media correspondents at E3, Sony had been running advertising campaigns near and around the convention center where E3 will take place.

Sony also confirmed that its PlayStation 3 would use Blu-Ray media discs to store approximately six times the data than traditional DVDs. The gaming console will have support for CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R and DVD+R formats. The entertainment company said PlayStation 3 would be backwards compatible all way to the original PlayStation, thereby, giving users with older games a chance to revive back their memories. PlayStation 3 will also feature Memory Stick Duo, SD and Compact Flash memory slots. Additionally, it will support a detachable 2.5" hard disk drive for more storage.

The gaming console will be capable of supporting seven Bluetooth controllers, and have six USB ports for additional peripherals.

The console will operate on a 3.2GHz Cell microprocessor, which will theoretically yield 2.18 teraflops of performance. It will have 256MB of XDR memory also operating at 3.2GHz, and 256MB of DDR VRAM running at 700MHz.

According to Sony, it will also feature multimedia features such as Internet access, digital photo viewing, video chat and digital audio and video support.