I'm not a gamer -- except perhaps for Tiger Woods Golf -- but rather a movie buff so I purchased one a few months ago for the BD and the Linux capability. It turns out that the PS3 is the least expensive BD player in the market but I am extremely happy with its performance.
Yeah - I was gonna hop on and say the same thing...the PS3 is one of the best deals out there right now...considering what all it does, anyway. You should'nt have a hard time finding a deal where you can get a whole slew of BR DVDs (15) for free.
Unless you really need one right away, I'd wait. Now that Time Warner has endorsed BR exclusively, the market is bound to get busy this year with prices coming down. The distributors have to have players in people's homes or nobody will rent or buy disks, so they will force the price issue.