Early sketches of the PS3 prototype were released to the public. Extreme critism arose, so Sony reverted back to the Original Playstation Hallmark Design, omitting the rumble feature to reduce costs and make the controller that lightest one I've ever held. They, instead, put in the SIXAXIS feature which moves the moves the character with your controller. It was released in December 2007 advertised as a "Multimedia Home Entertainment System".
After the release though, many complained about the lack of the Playstation "Spirit" that is the Rumble feature. Pressured, they released a new controller that is the current standard for all Playstation controllers, the Dualshock 3. Even though it was, and still is underused, the SIXAXIS feature is still available with it.
Though it had a bumpy start with developers porting subpar games from the Xbox 360 to it's own collection, and a sky-high starting price of $600, it is quickly becoming the system of choice between the 3 Top Next-Gen Consoles. Still rising from the bottom of the heap, it is still dealing with many developers taking the easy road and porting games over such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
That is not to say, the PS3 doesn't have Exclusives of it's own. The Uncharted franchise quickly became one of the PS3's top games. While it's offline storyline and online multiplayer experience is superb, what really shines is the graphics. Being built from the ground up based on Sony's Cell processor really shows it. The visuals are something to be reckoned with , rivaling the PC game known as the "Hardware Killer", Crysis. Not to mention, the processor allows auto-loading....
The cell processor turns out to be more useful than just for graphics. In LittleBigPlanet, combined with Blu-ray, it's shows that the possibilities are endless, allowing the Consumer to customize and utilize developer tools as part of the gaming experience.