For the cost of a regular title PS3 game, you can buy all of the games currently available for the PS3 in the PlayStation Store.

How do I know that? This afternoon we purchased all the downloadable games for the PS3 through the PlayStation Store available as of 1/6/2007 except for Lemmings (not interested in that title) and Tekken 5 which you can only buy using a Hong Kong workaround (US release date for the PS3 enhanced version of Tekken 5 is unknown). This came to $41.49 including tax for the following games:

Blast Factor - shooter like Geometry Wars
Cash Guns Chaos DLX - think Smash TV
Gripflip - stunt track race game
Sudoku easy pak - puzzle
Sudoku mild pack
Sudoku hard pack
Sudoku fiendish pack

In my PS3 review I covered a complete list of content available in the PlayStation Store including PS1 games you can buy and transfer to your PSP, movie trailers and demos. The amount of updates so far have been minimal (one, actually) since we opened it for Christmas which isn’t going to get the job done for Sony.

Hopefully, PS3 owners will start to see a steady stream of new content arriving this month. Sony really needs two new game updates a week to be looking like a viable alternative by holiday season 2007. And yes, I realize we just got through holiday season 2006, but let’s assume Sony releases five new games a month, that will only give them 66 titles by next Christmas. Xbox Live Arcade will have well over 100 titles by that time if they continue releasing regularly during arcade Wednesdays.

I’m not counting PS1 games that can be played on the PSP as part of the PS3 content nor movie trailers. If somebody already has the PS1 game, they can already play on the PS3, so buying these games for the PS1 isn’t very attractive. If you count trailers and demos for the Xbox, the comparison gets even more ridiculous.

One nice thing the PS3 has is almost full backwards compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games, however you can’t play games like Guitar Heros without a USB converter which a friend who also owns a PS3 told me would be out next month (didn’t get a link from him to confirm that, so consider that unconfirmed).

The Xbox 360 didn’t have any new game release this week, the Wii store was quiet too, so it was nice to Sony make a move Thursday with Gripshift, Jumpin’ Jack Flash (PSP) and a couple trailers.

• Any Sudoku fans in the house?
• 1080p puzzle game Piyotama for PS3
• Playstation Store sucking less, some PS1/PSP games now playable on PS3
• List of PS3 1080p games
• PS3 gaming sequelitis
• Gripshift playable demo available in Playstation store