Rumors of an impending price cut have been swirling for weeks now with full page scans of Circuit City ads showing the 60GB PS3 being advertised for $499 which is $100 off the usual price. Then Sony issues a flat out denial that it was so much as thinking of a price cut. Then came this AP story:
Sony Corp. announced a revised PlayStation 3 console Monday with a bigger hard drive for storing downloaded content such as video games and high-definition movies.
The new $599 PS3 increases the system’s storage capacity from 60 to 80 gigabytes and also includes a retail copy of the online racing title ``MotorStorm,’’ a company spokesman said.
Starting Monday, the current 60 gigabyte model will cost $499—a $100 price drop.
The larger capacity machine won’t be available in the United States and Canada until August.
Technically speaking the 80GB PS3 model isn’t new as it’s the official version released in Korea and there’s been rumors that it would be headed to the United States at some point in time as well. So it looks like both rumors were true. They did cut the price by $100 and they’re bringing over the 80GB version. Though, when you think about it, all they really did was eliminate the 20GB model (that happened some months back) and replaced it with the 60GB model so they could move the 80GB model over without raising the price for the top end machine.
Not too sure why anyone would spring the extra $100 for the 80GB model at this point. There were some actual differences between the 20GB and 60GB models (built-in wireless, HDMI connector, etc.) that made buying the 60GB version worth the extra cash, but the only difference on the new 80GB version is the size of the hard drive and you can swap out your PS3 hard drive yourself if you want to. Tack another $10 onto that $100 you saved and you can swap up to a 160GB HD for the cost of the 80GB model. Not that it matters too much as $499 is still more than I can justify at the moment without hitting at least a 4 or 5 numbers on the lotto or something. Still it brings the possibility of owning one a little closer and perhaps by the time one of the must-have games is released it’ll be down by another $100 or so and I’ll be working in an over-payed bodyguard/lackey job for Angelina Jolie or something.
Hey, a guy can dream can’t he?
I heard something interesting about the PS3, that it’s capabilities are not fully unlocked so that instead of designing new consoles in the future they can just sell unlocking software when the time is right and run the next generation of games on the same device. This may be to develop a kind of brand-loyalty through pricing, that it’d be cheaper to unlock a console you have than to buy a completely new one from someone else. Keeping PS3 prices high now may be to prolong the percied life of the machine for this to happen, but they risk driving away customers. They also risk illegal unlocking and competiters knowing exactly how to supersede the PS3’s future capabilities.