It's definitly bad news, it's clearly designed to save money, which would have been fine prior to all launches but now it just sounds like Europe is getting screwed. As for it becoming compatible with more over time, that stinks, right now is when you want the compatiblity, when the ps3 has few games and your relying on a collection of ps2 games, later on most people will have moved on to the ps3 titles. As for this new system being better, that's just Sony hype to actually make you think taking something away from the system is better for you. Do you really think they'd have some ps3s run faster then others? Like a new game comes out and reviews say it's a 7.5 on the old ps3s because it's choppy and can't handle running 30fps but it's a 8.0 on the new ps3s because it runs smooth. No, they'll make sure you don't know the difference between systems so even if it was better it'd be worthless.