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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.
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
"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.