I don't know why they don't just release an SKU without any HD for £250 and let people put their own in from the off.

200GB laptop hard drives currently sell at about £40, so for the same price, people could get a 200GB PS3. Saves them (Sony) buying the hard drives, takes a component out of the production costs and lets people make their own decision about what level of storage to put in there.

I guess the problem is that they made the bad decision to make the system totally dependant on the HD, if there is none present, the system doesn't work. Which means that Joe Public could rush home and plug it in, only to find it doesn't work.

So we now have six weeks where no one will want to buy a PS3 as they will now a improved version is coming out at the same price.

Are Sony stupid?!

They should reduce the price of the machine to £249 or even £199 then when they introduce the 80gb they can go back to £299.

What are retailers supposed to do with the 40gb machines that now look very expensive?

The US is getting a price drop on their PS3 arre they not? And we are stuck with the same price?

Man I am so mad with Sony.
The reason I haven't bought a PS3 is mainly because Sony keep screwing over Europe.

With ridiculous prices, inferior models etc...

I'm kind of glad to see that they are releasing a better model over here. But I say still to expensive.

MS are talking about releasing 360's at like £100 (probably for the arcade model) - which is cheaper (and better) than the Wii. But it would no doubt bring the cost of the Premium and Elite systems down too.
Yet Sony are unwilling to drop the price of the 40gb?!

AND also - will this 80Gb be able to play PS2 games?
-That's one thing that p*ssed me off so much - when the 2nd model they released in Europe couldn't play PS2 games.

Not so much that I desperately want to play them - but America and Japan's models could play them quite happily. It's the principle of the thing.

I don't understand how the PS3 has done so well in Europe - when they (we) are getting the worst deal from Sony.

I'm tempted to just import a US model - for cheaper. The Blu-Ray movies may not work. But I'm happy enough with standard DVD tbh (£4 for a DVD movie or like £25-30 for a Blu-Ray... hmm..)
I'd be getting it for the games really (buy a stand-alone Blu-Ray later).

I do believe that they will be backward compatible as they are going to do it with software rather than the emotion chip.. remember reading that some where. You can check if your games are backward compatible by their US website... h t t p : / / us . playstation . com / Support/ CompatibleStatus

They have stated it will not be BC due to costs.

@Chris.
The original 60Gb models in Europe had limited BC - using the emulation technique - similar to the 360's (where they can update the games that are BC)
But then they released the 40Gb model - which had no BC at all.
-Which was the main point I was making originally - how the US and Japan got better models and Europe got screwed over.

And as Jimothy said - they have actually announced that the new 80Gb model will be the same as the 40Gb model - just a bigger HDD. So no BC for the 80Gb - and still a crazy price.

I have the answer to all ur questions:
First:
America is not getting a price drop.
The only model being phased out is the current 80 in america, the 40GB is going too but coming back with a larger hard drive.
The 40gb is only getting a larger hard drive for the same price and does not have the same features as the current 80GB version in the us.
The new 80GB version has the same features as the 40GB version.
Sony are trying to make profits so cutting the price wont help them at all.
The 40 GB version and future 80 might get an update with the ps3 emulator just like the ps1 emulator, as sony are looking to put downloadble ps2 games on the ps store and withouth the emulator on the 40 and 80 they will not work.
Japan only has the 40 GB model now cos the 20 and 60 got phased out a while back, they will only have to 80 soon.

Did you notice on the box art of the new 80gb that its going to have the new dualshock 3 controller?

@1

the idea of releasing a SKU with no HDD is ridiculous! a machines that doesn't even work out of the box - the antithesis of user-friendly. Maybe fine for a tech head like you but it would bomb.

in the US the 80gb can play ps2 games but i'm not sure that the european version will do it

isn't the 80gb going to have anything of the japan/american version has? or is it only the BC that has been taken away?

Lets wait a second here friends, all this talk about no bc in the new 80gb in europe, when in the us, it does have bc. Makes no sense. I think, this isn't fact, I think that if they are going to make the 80gb in england, why not have the same model here. No offence but the yanks get the best, we get knock off.

Who cares about BC. Get them usb ports and card readers back. It's a real pain not to have them and Sony must have been really penny pinching to remove them.

Which stores in the UK will the new ps3 80gb console be sold in on 27th August?

Sony has confirmed its relaese in EU but not Russia for 27th August. Firstly, the 60GB used the EE Chip not software to have BC they never used updates to run them. Software updates are a possibility to run BC on both 40GB and 80GB and dont grumble about having to download things. It is most likely that these updates will be FOC. THe EE Chip was removed by sony to get prices down in PAL territories because it was costing £100 for sony to put that in the machine. So they saved u the cost of 2 maybe 3 games depending on what you get. Card readers were a good idea and so were the higher number of USB ports that were included on the 60GB but these additions were being passed onto the consumer at a cost of around £50. As it is less attractive I understand that people wont necessarily want to use a USB hub but you can add the ports that way. And for those of you whjo want a bigger HDD (not HD thats a movie format) then search for 2.5" SATA HDD on kelkoo or google, a large one, think 750GB will set you back around £120 from Seagate who are very reputable. Dont say its a tech thing to do its actually a piece of piss, Sony even give instructions of how to do it in the manuals with the console. And actually consoles without HDDs are a great idea because the PS3 contains basic memory to install the OS for you, it does it when you replace the HDD so why wouldnt it do it if there had never been a HDD????