My official review of the two new consoles will be running in the paper on Wednesday.

But I'll be posting initial impressions all this week of the PS3 and Wii.

I thought I'd kick things off with a visual comparison of all three next-gen consoles.

While this picture doesn't tell the whole story (the 360's more slender profile is somewhat of an illusion, due to the massive external power brick lurking behind my TV cabinet, while the PS3's power system is integrated into the console itself), it is a good visual illustration of which two systems are competing head to head, and which one is aiming at a different market.

More to come.