Goodbye PS3 80GB?
January 24, 2008

A pretty realistic scan of a Best Buy employee notice warning of the impending discontinuation of the largest capacity PS3 was making the rounds Thursday. According to the letter, 80GB PS3s will disappear off Best Buy shelves in the coming weeks. This could just be a rumor. And it could only mean that Best Buy has chosen to stop selling the 80 GB console, not that Sony is completely stopping new production. But it doesn't sound totally far-fetched if Sony discontinued it, given that PS3 sales seemed stalled out until the introduction of the 40GB $399 player. It would make sense for Sony to channel marketing efforts into hyping just one model, since the PS3 still faces heaps of competition from Wii and Xbox 360. Although the 40GB has proven popular, it does lack some key features included in the 80GB version, such as backwards compatiblity with Playstation 2 games. Hold on to those PS2's kids! But the built-in BD player in 40 GB and 80 GB is considered to have the same abilities, and recent firmware upgrading the PS3 to picture-in-picture Profile 1.1 capabilities was good for either capacity console. Sony probably needs to keep tweaking its PS3 strategy as the gaming system has yet to win in U.S. monthly sales against its Wii and Xbox 360 rivals, according to monthly NPD results. A Playstation spokesman has not responded for requests for comment.

Posted by Susanne Ault on January 24, 2008 | Comments (2)