[MW Forums]

Sony has confirmed that its own supply of 60GB PlayStation 3s is at an end -- the only ones left remain in retail inventory. more

[MacTel]

Yep, look what happens when you lower the price of the PS3. The general market wasn't too keen on the original price tag. The same thing may happen for the 80Gb version too if they lower it by $100 now and more around the holiday season.
A few friends of mine see the 60Gb as a real bargain and not just because of the price drop but because it is still the cheapest bluray player out there in relative terms. You get a game player, internet device, and oh a bluray disc player.

[Peter Cohen]

Yeah, the $499 price was the magic number as far as I was concerned. Alas, now I have to spend some real money upgrading my projector.

[sqlrob]

Still not too keen on it if you've seen the NPD numbers. It's finally beaten the GBA, but still has to beat the 360 (and that after 360 sales have dropped 60%)

[airhead]

If they really want to sell serious amounts of this thing for xmas they should drop the 80 GB $100, and make more 60GB versions at a discounted price as well. $499 isn't my magic #, but $399 would do it.

[DogHouseDub]

Don't the 60Gb versions have an actual PS2 chip embedded, while the new 80Gb version uses emulation for PS2 games? In my experience, my PS2 games play better (i.e. smoother gameplay, faster load times) on my 60Gb PS3 than they ever did on my PS2. I wonder if that will continue to hold true for the 80Gb emulation mode?
And Peter, the PS3 looks great on my 4 year old Sanyo PLv-Z2 (it does 720p). Since a lot of the games max out at 720p, I'm not sure how much you'd gain spending $3000-$5000 for a 1080p projector.

[sigma8]

Peter, typo: "may also reduce the price of the $599 80GB PS3 to $499 as my analyst expect."
Or...do you have your own analyst?
As for projectors, what are you looking for? I just got my first one this year, it's only 720p though. An Optoma HD70. I wish I could have gotten 1080p, but I wanted to keep the budget for the projector at about $1000...especially since I was buying the PS3 at the same time--for $600.. I did my projector research on projectorcentral.com on the advice of a friend.
Even though it's 720p, I'm very happy with the setup! As an added "bonus", I can hook the computer up to it at 1280x720, and receive the benefit of being at native resolution...but still have a low enough resolution to get really nice frame rates in games. I think 1920x1080 would bring many of my PC games to unacceptable performance levels.
I don't know what Sony's reality is.. but I agree a $399 PS3 would sell exceedingly well this holiday season.

[sigma8]

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Don't the 60Gb versions have an actual PS2 chip embedded, while the new 80Gb version uses emulation for PS2 games?

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This is true. The newer emulation-only PS3's do not have nearly as good backwards compatibility, but Sony claims it will improve over time. That's somewhat of an empty promise to me. If enough people complain, I'm sure they'll fix it, but if very few complain, I doubt they will do as much.

[Frost7]

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Still not too keen on it if you've seen the NPD numbers. It's finally beaten the GBA, but still has to beat the 360 (and that after 360 sales have dropped 60%)

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PS3 passed up 360 sales in July, actually, and as far as I've heard, have maintained that in August.

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Don't the 60Gb versions have an actual PS2 chip embedded, while the new 80Gb version uses emulation for PS2 games?

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This is true. The newer emulation-only PS3's do not have nearly as good backwards compatibility, but Sony claims it will improve over time. That's somewhat of an empty promise to me. If enough people complain, I'm sure they'll fix it, but if very few complain, I doubt they will do as much.

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I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, as most of the known incompatibilities with my games have been fixed in the last two firmware updates. Only the SOCOM hard drive bug, Silent Hill 1 tone bug, and Mercenaries opening FMV stutter remain unaddressed. And of those three, only the Silent Hill 1 bug affects gameplay experience in any way (and doesn't bug me all that much since I never got rid of my PSX).
They've been pretty on-the-ball with attacking backward compatibility issues, and that graphics bug was fixed three or more firmware updates ago. Even without upscaling on PS2 games look noticeably sharper on my PS3 than they did on my old launch PS2.

[Ponceno]

I get a PS3 on the week of the price drop on Amazon and get a movie and the Remote Control for free. I also recommended to a friend that bought a new plasma TV. And on Monday I get the 5 free movies from the blu-ray promotion.

[sqlrob]

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Still not too keen on it if you've seen the NPD numbers. It's finally beaten the GBA, but still has to beat the 360 (and that after 360 sales have dropped 60%)

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PS3 passed up 360 sales in July, actually, and as far as I've heard, have maintained that in August.

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Nope, they didn't
Nintendo Wii: 425K
Nintendo DS: 405K
Sony PlayStation 2: 222K
Sony PSP: 214K
Microsoft Xbox 360: 170K
Sony PlayStation 3: 159K
* Nintendo GBA: 87K

[NeoX]

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Still not too keen on it if you've seen the NPD numbers. It's finally beaten the GBA, but still has to beat the 360 (and that after 360 sales have dropped 60%)

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Wait for another six months or year and then see where the PS3 is. It will start steaming ahead. Why do I say this? Not because of the price drops (although that will help) but because of the games that are coming out. The 360 games tend to cater more toward the hardcore and Mature audience. The PS3 is going to see a lot of well known Sony only franchises that will help propel the console. Franchises like Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Final Fantasy, Sly Cooper to mention a few. And what about all the RPG's the PS2 (and PS1 before it) were famous for? Many of those will be heading to the PS3. The 360 does pathetic in Japan so not a lot of these types of games are coming to the 360.
I still see the PS3 as coming out on top in the long run...
Just my 2 cents.

[Lancetx]

You have to take NPD's numbers with a grain of salt as they generally don't include any online or direct sales numbers, they mostly deal with the numbers of consoles shipped to B&M resellers, not necessarily those that sold through to consumers.
Sales figures from other sources that do include online sales (such as vgchartz) show that the PS3 clearly outsold the Xbox 360 in the US for the month of July and that continued into early August. The Xbox 360 just pulled slightly ahead in the last week after Microsoft's recent round of price cuts.

[sigma8]

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They've been pretty on-the-ball with attacking backward compatibility issues, and that graphics bug was fixed three or more firmware updates ago. Even without upscaling on PS2 games look noticeably sharper on my PS3 than they did on my old launch PS2.

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That's good. I have a North American 60gig PS3, so my PS2 experiences are likely different than those to be had with the 80gig and European models. I can't comment from direct experience, so I was using the http://faq.eu.playstation.com/bc list as reference, which lists many games (including God of War) as running with "noticeable issues".

I hunted down this thread on the Sony EU site. It sounds like the issues are pretty trivial, but still it's unfortunate that there are any issues at all.
issues"" target="[/u]blank">http://community.eu....7&highlight=godwar"noticeableissues"
Based on that EU list, the compatibility situation looked a little bad to me, and I never saw any "improvements to backwards compatibility" in the patch notes for new firmwares. So I assumed it was pretty stagnant.. But maybe it's just a low-profile feature that they don't mention it.