The past six months of PS3 rumors have finally been put to rest as Sony has officially announced that the price of both PS3 models will be slashed by $100 immediatly. The rumors were all but confirmed yesterday when a number of US retailers started promoting the console at its new price point.
Later on at the Gamescom Expo which is currently taking place in Cologne, Germany, Sony for the first time revealed that the rumors were true and that the 80GB PS3 would drop from $400 to $300 and the 160GB console would come down from $500 to $400.
Sony also announced that the PS3 Slim will become available in early September. The Slim is likely to be remembered as Sony’s worst kept secret ever, and the announcement at Gamescom marked the first time that Sony had confirmed the rumors which had been circulating.
The Slim is looking like an attractive offering, even to those who already own a PS3, especially the older 40GB models. At $300 the Slim is two thirds the size of the regular PS3 but sports an internal hard-drive capacity of 120GB. Apart from these differences the Slim will be almost identical to the regular PS3 in terms of features and functionality.
At $300 the PS3 Slim will compete directly with the Xbox 360 in terms of price. The previous price advantage held by the Xbox 360 was the driving force behind its superior market share.
All things considered, the PS3 may well be a better purchase at this stage. Given the Xbox 360’s unacceptably high failure rate, coupled with a strong lineup of PS3 games on the horizon including God of War III, Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2, the PS3 has never been this well poised to assert some long overdue dominance in the console market.
Although a direct conversion of the new price puts the PS3 Slim at R2400, it is unlikely that we will see the console enter the local market at such a low price. It is more likely that it will compete closely with the Xbox 360 Pro at around the R3500-R4000 mark. We will update with local pricing as soon as details are revealed.
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