Pretty simple fail from Sony...

[WereKitten]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

You're not reading properly are you? Their intention was not to give you savings. Sony doesn't like it that people buy cheaper HDD's with larger capacities when they aren't profiting off of it. You must be in some dream world to think that Sony intended for things to be this way.

Oh, come on, this makes no sense at all. Is that why they gave the end user access to the HDD caddy with a single standard screw retention mechanism? Is that why there are instructions on how to swap the HDD right in the PS3 manual?

Sony always sold SKUs with bigger HDDs at a premium - the user paying for the convenience of not having to swap it him/herself for a bigger one - but it is clearly something advanced users are encouraged to do, as it adds value to the console for them exactly like the ability to multiboot different OSs.