SCE Australia have finally announced their 40Gb PS3 for $700. This represents a complete turn-around, not least because when the PS3 was originally launched elsewhere in the world there was already the choice of either the 40 or 60GB SKUs, but for whatever reason it was decided that Australia and Europe would only want the 60Gb one. Now, however, they intend to discontinue the 60Gb version once the current stock is sold.
Bizarrely, this discontinuation seems to be something that only Australia is condemned to suffer – it doesn’t appear to be happening in Europe. I can only hope that this is a precursor to the announcement of the world-wide (including PAL territories) release of the 80Gb model previously only available in South Korea, although this still seems unlikely.
To top things off, this new 40Gb version is said to contain no backwards capability whatsoever – not even their stop-gap emulation software. This seems particularly strange given Sony’s once vociferously pledged ongoing commitment to the PS2.
I understand that Sony and Microsoft don’t have Nintendo’s luxury of not actually making a loss on hardware sales, and that this $700 unit represents a significant undertaking on their part. Unfortunately though it seems far too little at a time when the PS3 is really floundering in the console war.