Sony has confirmed that the 80GB PS3, announced for North America
earlier in the week, will be coming to Europe. This came from David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe at Sony's Europe-focussed E3 press conference.
The new version cost £299, the same as the 40GB version - and will be available from August 27th. Sony says that it will become the "mainstay of the company’s hardware line-up". Extra storage aside, the new model will be the same as the old one. No added backwards compatibility, then.
With a new PS3 over a month away at the same price as the 40GB model, you might expect the current version to come down in price so they can be sold through. It won't. Sony doesn't really want to talk about it, either. "The 80GB replaces the 40GB. Please do not ask me if we're going to go down in price for the 40GB because I will give you the answer, the answer is no", said Reeves
†.
Why? Sony's been building towards this. "This has been planned by Kaz [Hirai] for months. There are very few 40GB models left - especially in UK. We predict we'll be out of stock by the time we launch", said Reeves. SPOnG has to wonder whether the company plans to sell fewer units through the rest of July and August than it would have done otherwise, because there seems to be little incentive to buy a 40GB PS3 with its 80GB counterpart just around the corner.
Sony also said that it will do various bundles for the PS2 and PSP. Further details were not given as these will vary between different SCEE territories.
†Source: Tech Radar