I’m trying to wrap my head around Sony’s latest marketplace gambits. First, they announce that the price of the PS3 will be cut by $100, and that a new model, with a bigger hard drive, will be available for the original $599 price. There are apparently now two catches:
1. The new 80 GB model will be ditching the hardware emulation of the PS2. This means that it will lose some of its backward compatibility, but be cheaper to make.
2. The 60 GB model, the one with the price cut, is being discontinued.
“With the 20GB version of the console already having been phased out in the U.S., this will leave the 80GB version of the console as the only model available. This version of the console will, like the European 60GB consoles, not include the PlayStation 2 Emotion Engine but instead rely upon software emulation of PlayStation 2 titles.”
I suppose this all means that if you want a PS3 for some reason, and have some PS2 games that aren’t on the list of supported games, then you need to get one today.
Link! (Gamasutra)
We’ve all been hornswoggled, or misinformed depending on your take. The older, slightly infirmed PS3 will be stocked for the foreseeable future.
“SCEA has reacted with puzzlement to the European perspective, suggesting that there may have been an incorrect interpretation. The spokesperson said, “Those quotes [published by a UK-based game industry website] from David Reeves are not accurate. He said that if they had lowered the price in Europe, that territory would have run out of their current inventory by the end of July.””
Who to believe? Who knows? Does anyone care any more?
Not likely.
Link! (Next-Gen)
And now we’re back to the ‘Once supplies are gone, they’re gone’ story again. It’s like a revolving door of misinformation, confusion, and good old-fashioned case of the crazies.