As far back as the original announcement for the PlayStation 3 system, it was common knowledge for the most part that it would not ship with a hard drive. The reasoning behind it was that it would not be used enough, nor would it ever be big enough to satisfy the needs of gamers, therefore it would be left as an optional add-on. The confirmation of this went as far back as June of last year, right after E3, when Ken Kutaragi himself stated that the system would not ship with a hard drive.
In a BusinessWeek article which I actually reported on earlier, an interesting quote was written. The quote read that the PS3 would ship with "a huge hard disk to store photos, music, and TV shows." This article was highly credible in its information and was dead on throughout, so for a statement such as this to be made, the author must know something. The author of the article's name is Kenji Hall. Hall had direct access to everything Sony to write the article, adding to the credibility even further.
Another thing to note is the fact that Sony already practially confirmed an onlien service for PS3 similar to Xbox Live, which would require some type of bigger storage medium to do what they want to accomplish on it. I guess let the rumors fly once again as E3 nears and more information comes out. As it seems right now though, a hard drive for the PS3 launch is a definite possibility.
For more news, check out our Xbox 360 site or our Nintendo Revolution site.