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?
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