Sony has announced that, in an effort to meet their March sales target, no one should bother buying a PlayStation 3 until June 12th.
In a posting on the PlayStation blog, Sony explained that with the April release of the Dual Shock 3 controller and a new PlayStation 3 bundle on June 12th, there's simply no reason to buy a PS3 until then.
So, after taking the current 80GB PS3 off the market, tons of speculation was raised that Sony would be releasing a new PS3. After all, why else would they remove a model that, according to Sony, was selling as well as the 40GB model if not to replace it with a new, better model?
I've been looking into buying a PS3 recently (hey, I need to do something to pass the time before Super Smash Bros. Brawl is finally released...), and I've noticed that the 80GB PS3 seems to be disappearing.
It's no longer available from Best Buy. I asked a blue-shirt at a Best Buy if they had any 80GB PS3s. When they looked it up on the computer, I noticed that the "deleted" flag had been set on its entry. Apparently Best Buy no longer expects to carry 80 GB PS3s.
This is starting to get to be ridiculous. It all started with the announcement that we could expect the "cheap" PS3 to cost $500, and has continued to spiral downhill from there. So here's my attempt at a list of everything we currently know about the PS3:
The "cheap" version is severely crippled, missing the HDMI output that allows high-def Blu-Ray movies, and cannot be upgraded to fix this flaw.
Blu-Ray looks substantially worse than HD-DVD.
The PS3 memory architecture is such that only half can be read by the main CPU.
According to some unsubstantiated rumors, Sony is going to miss the $600 price point for the PS3. The actual price is rumored to be even higher due to extremely low chip yields for the cutting-edge PS3. Right now it's expected that the PS3 will sell for around $650, although that price may actually still rise if they can't improve yields.