Thursday, October 18, 2007

Cheaper PS3 Yet Again

Gamespot has recently reported that Sony will be officially releasing a 40 GB version of the Playstation 3 in North American for $399.

On the console's November 2 release it will come bundled with a Blue-ray version of blockbuster film hit "Spiderman 3."

The 40 GB PS3 will have 2 USB ports and will still maintain 802.11 b/g wireless networking capability. However, what is most upsetting of all is the lack of software backwards compatibility for Playstation 2 discs. No word on potential emulation software currently used on the Xbox 360.

The news doesn't end there.

Sony has also announced that the price of the 80 GB version of the Playstation 3 bundled with the game "Motorstorm" has been lowered to $499 and is effective immediately.

This places the 80 GB PS3 only $50 within the $449 Xbox 360 Elite.

I believe Tor Thorsen and Emma Boyes related this Blueray perspective to the price drop best in their Gamespot article.

"That said, the PS3's inclusion of a Blu-ray disc drive may give it an edge to North American audio-visual fanatics still on the next-gen console fence. No 360 can play HD-DVDs without the addition of an external $179 HD-DVD player, which would make the Pro model cost $528 and the Elite cost $628 in the US for comparable functionality. Also, the 40GB PS3 is now the most affordable BD player on the market, with the cheapest standalone BD players still costing over $400. Also, all PS3s have HDMI audio-video outputs, a feature that is standard only on the 360 Elite, though it is being slowly phased into other models."

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