Sony slashes and burns PS3 price in US

I know not everyone travels, or knows how the economy works, so I can explain MOST of the £100 difference between the US and UK price.

1/ The US price is PLUS tax. You cannot walk into a store an buy at the price you believe you can. Sales tax is extra (and varies from state to state, hence the reason why it's not included). So you can take 17.5% of the UK price, to make a fair comparison.

2/ In Europe, any manufacturer importing goods from outside the EU, is subject to additional taxes (to encourage production to remain in EU). On the PS3, this is 10% of the price.

3/ Wether you like it or not, companies treat Europe as a whole, and support costs are much higher, due to geographical reasons, and language reasons.

Basically, everything in Europe costs more, that's how it is, it's not the manufacturers fault, it's our European goverments. If you don't like it, move abroad, but be prepared for lower standard of living, lack of free heathcare and a very basic welfare state.

The problem is, which one do you choose, the cheaper one with no PS2 support, or the $100 more with PS2 BC, double HDD space, card readers and games?

I think most people (aside from those buying to soley as a Blu-ray player), will opt for the more expensive model.

Still it's nice to have the choice, and unlike the Xbox Core/Arcade (or whatever it is this week), neither unit is "gimped" when it comes to it's PS3 gaming abilities.

I know it's been said before, but I'd like to mention the price of $1000 in Croatia :-) And that for a 20GB model... yeah, we're all gonna buy it, sure...

:P

I was going to note what Mak did, that we have to remember the 40GB model is gimped. 
Most people, such as myself, are unwilling to buy the model that's missing functionality, especially since I do still have a PS2 and plenty of PS2 and PS1 games. 
As such, the 80GB is still the only reasonable option, and $499 is way too much. I'll stick with the Xbox 360, which is NOT gimped in any way. One simply doesn't come with a hard drive, but unlike a PS3 is fully upgradeable to take on whatever functions you need that the higher models have. 
I'll take choice and upgrade paths over limitations you're stuck with for the lifetime of the system any day.

Finally Sony has a two SKU structure that works. 

The $100 difference between the 80GB PS3 and 40GB PS3 'lite' is worth it for the BC, extra HDD capacity, memory card reader, and USB ports. What it does is give consumers a choice, not a bad choice either. 

What I like about this is that Sony is consistently staying with their two tier pricing. While I think that this $400 unit will generate a lot of sales, and is much closer to what most consumers want to pay. There is still more to come. BD players will drop in price over the next year by a lot, and the PS3 will have to follow to some extent. During 2008 there will either be two $50 cuts, one in spring and one in the fall, or they'll just push through 12 months and cut another $100 later in 2008. 

Much like the PS2 did before it, the PS3 will really begin to hit the sweet spot in pricing and game availability during it's second year of life. Sony's not done yet.

Let's not forget the 80GB models still doesn't have full hardware backware compatibility support.

I frankly would buy the lowest model, put my own larger HDD in it, and be on my way. Card readers aren't very important for me. The thing has USB ports, doesn't it?

Doesnt the US version of the ps3 have a hardware chip so that it can play older games? but the uk one does it via software emulation? so the cheaper one in the uk just doesnt have the emulation software? but the hardware (minus the harddrive) is the same?

That's nice and all but there are still no games to play on the system!!!!!! Yes, I know wait for MGS4 but never really like those games either so STILL no games to play on the system!!!!

According to Sony, as asked by a 1up.com guy, the original 60GB PS3 has both the PS2 'Emotion Engine' chip and the PS2's graphics output chip. The Euro 60GB PS3 took away the 'Emotion Engine' chip and did that bit by software emulation but it still had the PS2 graphics output chip. Now the new 40GB models don't have the graphics chip either so can't do any PS2 emulation however apparently it still can do PS1 emulation which is all done in software...

At last Sony make the move everyone has been crying out for. First the 40Gb PS3 comes out in the UK at £299 and now the US have one too. Funny how the UK version is still £100 more expensive though. Must be those shipping costs again, despite the PS3's being shipped into both the UK and US from Taiwan or China or somewhere.

Does the new 80GB still contain the Emotion Engine and the PS2 graphics system?

I've just bought one :(

Let's all get some truth about PS3 backwards compatibility.

Original PS3s had the PS2 chipset on board. So compatibility was near 100%. Minor problems with some peripherals caused a small number of problems. Some games where programmers had deviated from the platform guidelines also had problems, but the number was small.

80GB and European PS3s did away with the Emotion Engine. A combination of emulation of the EE by the Cell, and the original Graphics synthesizer allow more or less 80% of PS2 games to work. A number of high profile games have problems, but in terms of all game sales on PS2 about 90% of all game discs ever sold for PS2 will work.

The new 40GB models do away with the Graphics Synthesizer and PS2 compatibility completely. The GS chip has very high bandwidth, and it's not been possible yet to emulate the GS with the required performance. This is probably not going to change.

The two SKU range allows you as a consumer to choose between a 40GB PS3 without BC for less money (which isn't so bad since you probably already have a PS2), or you can pay a little more and get the 80GB model with BC. Since the emulation of the EE is a fairly contained task, it's likely that this will get even better and future system upgrades may result in even better BC performance.