After a trying year, Sony's PlayStation 3 is on the comeback, writes Jason Hill.

Last year the PlayStation 3 was much maligned for its high price, limited software range and the removal of backward compatibility with PS2 games, but Sony is now clawing back some much-needed momentum.

Australian PS3 sales for the year eclipsed Microsoft's Xbox 360 and sales in PS3's crucial home territory of Japan are also lifting.

This year PS3's games line-up looks stronger than 360's and the high-definition movie format war appears to be over, giving PS3 buyers confidence there will be plenty of games and Blu-ray movies to choose from.

The install base for PS3 in Australia is now 190,000, which includes 30,000 consoles given away with Bravia television sets in a post-Christmas promotion that dramatically lifted sales of Sony's LCD TVs and saw Sony Computer Entertainment scrambling to get sufficient console stocks to satisfy demand.

"If you stack us up against the competition, Blu-ray sticks out as one differentiator but the games will also start showing what PS3 can do this year," says SCE managing director Michael Ephraim. "And we'll bring the price (currently $699) down as soon as the manufacturing cost comes down."

Mr Ephraim says the low-cost PS2 with its range of "party starter" favourites such as SingStar and Buzz will also continue to be popular this year, despite its age. "The PlayStation brand for calendar 2007 made up 43% of the total market. So the brand is very healthy."

Mr Ephraim is particularly excited about the forthcoming PlayTV add-on for PS3, which lets users record television shows to the console's hard drive and further broadens the console's flexible multimedia capabilities, which include DVD video and music CD playback, streaming video, photos and music from PCs, web browsing and high-definition Blu-ray films.