Sony to sell 80GB PS3 at 40GB price
Backward compatibility to go for good?
Sony is to leave its 40GB PlayStation 3 by the wayside, in favour of a cheaper 80GB model. That’s despite only recently stating that it has no plans to fiddle with the console’s prices.
The firm yesterday announced at the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles that from September it will sell an 80GB model in the US for $399 (£199/€250) - a price cut of around $150 (£75/€94).
Gamers will be pleased with the announcement, because not only will it save wallet strain, but it also means that they get twice the storage capacity for the same price as the current 40GB model. Various adaptations of the 80GB model are already on sale in the US, such as the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle pack.
However, Sony stated at E3 that the new 80GB model will boast "all of the features and functionality" as the current 40GB model but for those extra 40 gigabytes. This perhaps implies that $399 will buy gamers a refreshed 80GB console that doesn’t support backwards compatibility through software emulation, as the current 80GB model does but the 40GB PS3 does not.
Sony’s 80GB PS3 announcement stands in stark contrast to the recent words of Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s CFO. Just last week he said that “our plan is not to reduce the price” of the PS3, because Sony is instead opting for a long-term strategy concentrating on profitability, rather than selling more PS3s.
That plan didn't last long, then...
No plans to follow the US price cut with a similar reduction in Europe has been announced by Sony.
COMMENTS
@ Clueless AC
"Says who? Sure VG Chartz claims that they are, but Sony themselves stated yesterday that they're only very near shifting 10 mill units, or, to put it another way, they're not even at 10 million units yet."
Sony said they are close to shifing 10m units THIS FISCAL YEAR...
Sales to date are about 14m, and should be about 18m by the end of the fiscal year.. (March 09)
@AC "@ Alex"
Correction needed on my part. I meant to say that the console sales are still quite strong with regards to sales of units. I meant to not insinuate that it was surpassing the Xbox.
Corrected. Standing. Me :o)
@ PIB
Quote: "Posters laughing about "PS3 fanbois" sound just like XBox fanbois. Truly objective posters don't revert to childish name calling."
Do you see what you did there?
Paris, because <insert tedious half-witticism here>.
@ PS3 fans... FF13 for other than PS3.
I'm still laughing about FF13 being multi-console, when for so long the three hardcore PS3 fanbois I know IRL were insisting it would only be for the PS3, Square Enix is sticking with Sony, there's no way it could be...
And then BAM! It's announced that it'll be for 360 and PS3! There are so many PS3 owners moaning and whinging who bought the PS3 just for FF13 that I can't help but laugh.
I don't own any of the newest generation of consoles yet, and I'm playing my PS2 right now so I'm hardly AGAINST Sony, but still, I do take schadenfreude in other people's pain.
I will admit, though, that I'm most interested in the 360, if only for Blood Bowl this October. The principle use for the PS3 is as a Blu-Ray player that a person might sometimes want to play games on; other than that it just has shinier graphics and shiny graphics do not equal good games.
If nothing else, twenty-five years of playing games has taught me THAT much.
