Most notably among them is the addition of Trophies, a new system that basically imitates the Xbox 360′s Achievement system.  Players can earn permanent awards for completing in-game challenges that are linked to their profiles.

A handful of publishers have stepped up to confirm that they’ll be incorporating trophies into their games.  Burnout Paradise and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune will both get trophies added to them in future updates.

The Xbox 360 achievement and gamerscore system has proven a great success for Microsoft.  Some players have gone to great lengths to improve their Xbox gamertag’s status, even playing games they wouldn’t have otherwise played.  King Kong is a classic example of this — the game received low reviews but has been played by an unusually high number of gamers because of the ease of earning achievements.  [See more ways to earn easy achievements and gamerscore.]

Although not all PS3 games will support Trophies, at least at first, this is the next step in the PS3′s gradual attempt to match the Xbox 360′s success in its online network.