Sony still has no clue. PS3 is already a dud as a gaming console as far as I am concerned. 360 and Wii are raping it really hard in NA.

It is completely moronic to drop backward support for budget model. Backward support was is one of the primary reasons why PS2 did so well in the previous generation. IMO, it would have made more sense to drop BR movie playback support if they truly wanted PS3 to succeed as a gaming console.

Sony is gambling a lot on the bet that PS3 sales will have a massive upsurge. They hope that it will establish enough marketshare to convince tier 1 developers to make exclusive content.

PS3 is ironically doing much better as an affordable HD player that can do some folding. It seems that Sony is more interested that Blu-Ray wins the already pointless format wars. HD-DVD and BR have already lost. Average joe clearly doesn't care and only videophiles are investing in HD-DVD and BR.

as far as i can tell as soon as someone figures out and can be bothered porting world of warcraft onto this thing, given that it runs a flavor of linux, then the console war will be over

(in Soul Calibur 2, "Nightmare" voice)

"Trolls, Come unto me!"

I'm still not buying ps3 this year. Maybe next year with more price drops.

PSX was a Japanese-only release, it basically was a PS2 with DVR, DVD and SACD capabilities. It had ultimately failed due to lackluster sales that came mainly from its steep price tag. Sound familiar?
No, it doesn't sound familiar. The PS3 is not the flop you make it out to be, and certainly not anywhere near as bad as the PSX.

I have been exposed to HD content, but quite frankly find it to be massively overhyped. Average joe probably feels the same way when he glances at the HDTV + BR or HD-DVD player price tags at a local A/V outlet.There isn't really that much material out there that gives HD justice. Yeah again, it's not a big deal to you so it must not matter to anyone else either, huh? Ha! As for material, unless you're the world's most finicky movie fan, there's scores of worthy titles out there in the hundreds that are currently available.

By the time HDTV content becomes far more commonplace. I suspect that video on demand solutions and cable services will ultimately supplant HD-DVD and BR for mainstream market. I really doubt it. The bandwidth isn't there for high quality 1080i right now, (forget VOD) and you can forget about 1080p. Consumers want their physical media, too.

The biggest difference why gamers are willing to spend just much on a decent GPU/CPU combo as he/she would on a HD-DVD or BR player is that games are interactive content. He/she are likely to spend much more time playing his/her favorite games then watching the same, old movie flicks that just got upscaled to higher resolutions. BR and HD-DVD have interactive content as well in the form of HDi and BD-J, and it's only going to increase. So much for that rationale.

And "the same old movie flicks that just got upscaled"? You have no clue what you're talking about if you think movies are upscaled for HDM. Please stop posting before you embarass yourself further.

For those bashing how well the PS3 has done in it's first year. You may want to look at how well the 360 did in it's first year (no better).

This will boost sales, although I still want a higher end PS3. I also want a Corvette and my Mortgage payed off so.......

Unbelievable. They would have sold at least one, to me, had they not NEEDLESSLY crippled the backward compatibility. I got two words for you sony, and they rhyme with "pluck ewe". I'm not buying another console just to have to keep my old one in my entertainment center just to play my hords of PS2 games.

Simply idiotic. And I'm not, REPEAT NOT going to essentially re-buy a PS2 by paying a hundred bux more for a PS3 with backward compatibility. Simply unbelievable that some guy in japan has his head so far up his rear that this sounded like a good idea to him.

/rant

Lol. Is it really that big a deal?? If you want to play PS2 and PS1 games, get a PS2...they're cheap as chips now, they're tiny, and christ, if you're seriously considering blowing $400 + $whatever for each game, $50 for a second hand slim PS2 isn't gonna kill ya?

Jeeesus,

"We're choosing to focus on the PlayStation 2 consumer with the PlayStation 2, which remains incredibly relevant, and focus on the PlayStation 3 consumer with the new 40-gigabyte model and the great software coming out,"

Excellent. For anyone who thought they couldn't do anything stranger than they already have, Sony is now in competition with itself.

Is the rumble controller also six-axis? It seems to me that it would be hard to merge those technologies.

If I were to buy a PS3 I would want backwards compatibility . Phil Harrison ( I think thats the guys name) made a big deal out of the PS3 being able to play PS2 and PS1 games now they have dropped support for it from part of their lineup. It really seems goofy to me to have a game console where the machines have different abilities.

If you have console X you can play anything that says PlayStation on it. If you have console Y you can only play games that say PS3 on them. How many people are going to go out and buy PS2 games only to find that they wont work on their shinny new console because they bought the cheap model ? The people that the cheap PS3 targets is the people that probably dont have an extra 100 bucks or whatever to burn on a game console. They are also the people that are more likely to pick up bargin bin software because it is cheap.

I will bet that with in a year sony says opps are bad and comes out with yet another sku of the 399 model that has backwards compatibility.

So even at $399 - I'm still getting the cheap-plastic crap they call a SIX-AXIS? I played Heavenly Sword at a friends with the SIX-AXIS and I tell ya - the whole motion sensor thing is worthless - can't even aim my cannon-balls or arrows straight without tossing it like a Wii-mote...

Heh..."PlayStation 2, which remains incredibly relevant"....perhaps because the PS3 hasn't managed to replace it...

Does anyone know if this new 40GB pack for NA comes with Dual-Shock 3? I ain't getting it until it's packed in...