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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 new 40Gb no compatibility, half the USB connectors, no memory card slot model is going to be £299 here in Britain, which is 610.61 US dollars at today's exchange rate. The 60Gb model is cut to 'just' £349, or $712.72 US.
Yes, these prices do include sales tax, but it's still way, waaaay too much for me or anyone I know to consider picking one up, especially as the only PS3 game that really interests me (Gran Turismo) slipped from being a launch title and has now vanished into development hell, with no sign of a firm believable release date.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
It's about the same price as an XBox 360 Elite and in some ways still superior to it, such as having wifi, bluetooth, gigabit ethernet, HDMI 1.3, blu-ray etc. The HDD is less, and it might be missing an HDMI cable but otherwise what's to separate them. Of course too network play is free on the PS3 and things like the HDD, headsets etc. use industry standards so those are potential savings too. Lack of BC sucks but then you can always buy the 60Gb model if you want.
I'd say the PS3 is getting pretty close to the 360 price wise and has enough to easily justify it.
Sure...if there were any games worth buying for it. I've had my PS3 since four days after launch...you know how many PS3-exclusive games I have for it?
Two.
Why only two? BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY GAMES FOR IT. I don't care how much a "bargain" it is when there isn't shit out there for it. I (and many other PS3 owners, I would imagine) am quite pissed that stuff that was supposed to already be released now has a release date of mid-2008 or even simply TBA.
What a fuckin' waste.
Living With a Nerd
Isn't it? Whereas the PS3 cost 599 at launch, you can now buy it for 399. If BC means so much to you, buy the 60Gb bundle or hang onto your PS2.
What is more, the compatibility was just a software emulator in the European consoles anyway!
No it wasn't. It was software assisted since it still contained a GS chip. And the BC was very good indeed.
but from a marketing point of view, Sony continues to baffle me.
I expect their reasoning is that for the sake of a few periphery features they can deliver a console at a price that makes it very attractive to a great number of people in time for Christmas. If lack of BC bothers you or any other consumer, then buy the 60Gb bundle which is also 100 cheaper.
Sony keeps changing its mind... I'm paraphrasing from memory but Sony has said something similar to all the following quotes:
1: Sony: It sucks that the 360 doesn't have full BC
Now Sony releases this model
2: Sony: Rumble is last-gen
Rumble controllers will be launched soon in Japan, and in Spring 2008 in the rest of the world
3: Sony: 360 has too many models, it's ridiculous!
So far I count 4 Playstation models: 60 GB (discontinued in America but still being sold everywhere), 20 GB (discontinued), 80 GB, 40 GB. Also, notice that these models are not necessarily better as disc space increases. For example, the best one is the 60 GB (with full hardware PS2 compatibility)...
Maybe there are more, but at least these three show how unstable the Playstation brand is lately. I'm counting on a big flop (and it's already happening).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
"As we come to our first Christmas with the PlayStation 3 there's going to be about 65 games in the marketplace, so we feel now that there's sufficient choice in the marketplace and that we're still better off using that money that we'd put into backwards compatibility in either investing in new games or using that money to help support bringing the price down so that people can get into the franchise." (From www.qj.net)
I don't know if I'm in the place to comment on how true this could possibly be, because I have no clue how difficult it is for backwards compatibility programming, because I don't program...at all.However, if you read the lines and in between them, they are taking engineers away from backwards compatibility, which means that people who still have the SOFTWARE versions of the still BC-enabled PS3's are going to be getting less and less updates for games that still struggle to work, because they are throwing less personnel at it. So, I can truly say that this is one of the first times in History, that the early adopters didn't get screwed (at least from the BC perspective, ignoring the original high price and lack of games for the first year part of that statement....) :)
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
"It would be interesting to compare how many games the 360 had 11 months into its life."
Most people don't actually find it that interesting. Most people just want to trash on whatever console they don't have. If you actually align the launches of the consoles from the data of a site like vgchartz then all you see is that the PS3 is selling on par with what the 360 did over the same time span (of course the wii is killing them both) http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=Wii®1=All&cons2=PS3®2=All&cons3=X360®3=All&align=1. It will be interesting to see what the PS3s christmas upswing looks like compared to the 360s.
As far as games. Well you can look at metacritic and see how many games were rated in green and what year they came out. Unfortunately they don't have a handy flash graph to show it nice and pretty but if you sit down and count the titles from the first year of each launch the 360 had 19 in 2005 and the PS3 had 12 in 2006. Next year we can compare titles from the first full year of each console (the 360 had 48 in 2006, and the PS3 currently has 31 for 2007 and will most likely hit at least 40 by the end of the year, though that's very conservative, i see at least 16 games being released by the end of the year that i would be surprised and disappointed if they were below 70 on metacritic.)
So my point is if you align the launches there's not much difference in performance of the 360 and PS3, but that's not nearly as newsworthy as a zealous mob screaming about the demise of one or the other.