Come September, Playstation 3 will be double the size for the same price. Sound familiar? An 80 gigabyte unit will be available with all the 40GB model’s features, but for $399.99, just in time for the new season of releases.

Avid gamers who don’t own the system yet can now hold out a few months to get a bigger HDD.  This sounds eerily like Microsoft’s announcement, and it seems that the 40GB model will be dropping out of the US market to be replaced by this cheaper 80GB model.

So in reality this might not be a price drop, but a console for the same price with a bigger hard drive.  This is how the official press release reads:

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) held its annual press conference today at the E3 Media & Business Summit, making a series of announcements which demonstrated the strength of the PlayStation brand across all three of its platforms and further leveraged the heritage and momentum of PlayStation’s family of products to provide consumers with more compelling entertainment options than anyone in the videogame industry.

Starting in September 2008, the newly announced PLAYSTATION(R)3 (PS3(TM)) 80GB model will become the mainstay of the company’s hardware line-up. The 80GB model will retail for $399, and will offer all of the features and functionality of the 40GB model with double the storage to accommodate more movies, graphics, music, photos and other entertainment content — all for the same price.

As with its predecessor, the new 80GB model will be a complete entertainment system comprising of a Blu-ray(TM) player, HDMI output, an integrated Wi-Fi connection, Cell Broadband Engine(TM) and a built-in 80GB hard-disk drive. The multi-functionality of the 80GB PS3, combined with more than 140 exclusive and third-party titles and the PLAYSTATION(R)Network, is a comprehensive entertainment value designed to appeal to a wide range of consumers from hard-core gamers to general entertainment enthusiasts.

This price drop is aided by the addition of new PSN Network releases and a new video service. Sony is finally giving much needed attention to price, something that hindered the console on its launch. It is great to see they’ve shown some flexibility in this area.

Tags: E3 08, PS3

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