^ Well you are definetly in the minority, as sales have only increased since this has came out, especially in EU where it is the only option.

No man. No 80GB for EU until SCEE confirm it. You can't take anything said by EB/Gamestop employees seriously.

That's exactly what happened in Europe.

And a further point, why bundle in a cheap PS2 with the PS3 when you can keep making money on healthy PS2 sales? It's obvious that the PS2 is far more profitable right now, so why cannibalize those sales?

 It might be good for sales, but it's not necessarily good for the consumer.  Also sales aren't really going to do drop with a cheaper sku available right before Christmas.  

The difference with this is that they are leaving only one model as an option, which isn't in and of itself a bad thing.

But stripping out BC might upset some people over in the land of the rising sun.

 I think it's only natural to discontinue the lower spec'ed models as the price of manufacturing the higher spec'ed ones plummets. Everyone's gain, really.

I think this means once they are gone sony is going to do 1 of 2 things.

A) get rid of the 80g model all together and return to a one sku version. Maybe with optional HDD's you can buy separately.
B) add the 80g model to everywhere else once the factories that were building the other versions have been converted over.

I think B sounds more likely.

question: Does MS have more than one version available in Japan?

But that's not what they did, is it?

This is worrying news. I'm not sure it's a sign of things to come in NA though, because Japan is a very unique region. The 60gb/20gb models there were still using full hardware backwards compatibility, making them quite a bit more expensive to produce. The 80gb, on the other hand, costs almost the same as the 40gb (the EE chip is $30 at most) but sells for $100 more. So it actually probably has the highest profit margin of any PS3 model, and it would only lose Sony money to drop it. (There's also the 65nm chipset in the 40gb to consider, but any new 80gb models made from now on will use the same process).

I hope this is only the first step towards introducing the 80gb model to Japan, and not the start of a global discontinuation of backwards compatible models everywhere. That would piss me off to no end.

By the way, is the 40gb really the only model available in Europe now? I know they claimed that was their plan, but can you really not find a 60gb anymore?

In have just seen a 60Gb in Spain today ,it was in such a small store dedicated to mobile phones and electronics that probably no one has seen it yet .No one wanting to buy a console would go there .

I expect too the 80Gb to be introduced everywhere .Thats what Sony should do and what I think will be done .I just talked with some people I know at ECI (the biggest chain in Spain ) and she told me Sony told them the 80Gb was arriving some time in april .Until there is a clear confirmation we cant say this is happening but I think it will .