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EU Release of Price Cut 40 GB PS3 Confirmed
sinister rouge writes "The BBC has a story confirming a cut price PlayStation 3 with a 40GB hard drive and no backwards compatibility with previous consoles. The console is set to go on sale later this month in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. No word yet on that particular SKU for the North American market. '[Ray Maguire, head of PlayStation UK,] said: "The people who want to get into new technology early are prepared to pay a premium. We want to get the console to the next level; we have re-engineered the machine to bring the price down. We have invested a lot of money in reaching this price point." Sony is still losing money on each console sold, said Mr Maguire, but would lose less money on the 40GB machine. "We are in an investment phase," he said.'"
The thing to keep in mind is that North America is the 360's strongest territory. Comparatively its less dominant in Europe, and pretty weak in Japan. If Sony can gain some market share in those two areas, they can come back at NA from a stronger position. Their current method of selling a more expensive system with fewer games in Microsoft's backyard sure isn't working.
Also, Europe didn't really get a price cut like NA did, they got annoying bundles instead. This move will help them there, for sure.
I don't think they've given up on the NA market at all, but their strategy has been so poorly executed thus far that going back and focusing on easier markets for a while is probably a good idea. They can come back at NA later with a lower price, more games, and rumble included.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Of course, dropping the software-based PS2 emulation further shows how clueless they can still be.
The Raven
No, the EU PAL PS3s emulated the Emotion Engine, but had a hardware graphics synthesizer. There was NEVER EVER ANY VERSION THAT HAD SOFTWARE ONLY EMULATION. Sorry for the all-caps but this particular misunderstanding keeps getting repeated. I assume Sony have chopped the GS from their new mainboard so there is no PS2 circuitry at all now. As such you don't get any emulation until / if they figure how to emulate the GS in software too. People more knowledgable than I say that this would be difficult because the GS has a very low latency and wide bandwidth. Hence the reason it wasn't removed even in the PAL version.