Yeah weird pricing to say the least. I would have expected $199/$249 or perhaps $229/$269...but I would never have guessed a slight increase. Hopefully they'll drop the price shortly after the holiday season after some nice Christmas profit.

sony should have priced the 500GB at $250, the 250GB at $199 and then later release the 12GB for $169. that would have been perfect pricing for PS3 at this stage in its lifecycle. i think its ridiculous that ps3 is 6 years old and still hasnt reached a price point of $199 and we wonder why they're lagging so far behind in the US. even the pricing in europe is ludicrous. 229 euros for the 12GB model? are sony crazy!!

this sums it up perfectly

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/sonys-new-playstation-3-is-25-pct-smaller-but-the-price-isnt-right/

You need to buy the official mounting bracket or a propietary hard drive for the new PS3 if you want to add an HDD afterwards, so you have to pay more than $60:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4786913

The more I think about this and now having seen the unboxing, I honestly feel this is a bit of a con. The NEW PS3 is cheap looking, and here I thought the PS3 Slim was cheap compared to the Phat PS3. Seeing as here in the UK we are only gonna get the 12Gb and 500Gb models with a £40 difference in cost...and even the RRP of the 12Gb model comes in around the same as the 160Gb Slim model at the moment....I can't see them selling well...but can see the Slims selling loads.

I honestly now feel that they should have brought the 12Gb model in really cheap...around £150 in the UK rather than the £189/£199 price point it will have.

There is no benefit in getting the new model....okay it's smaller, but it's not cheaper and it's potentially louder, and it looks cheaper and uses cheaper parts.

Completely agree, the 12GB model should be on sale for £149.99.

there were rumours it was gonna cost only £99 aswell, which makes it even more surprising. the perfect price would have been £129.99 but of course sony do the worst thing possible when it comes to pricing.

That's so dumb... a stupid bracket. I, knowing myself, would find a way around it (make your own, slide the drive in anyway, etc.), but this is ridiculous.

What a bunch of dumbass engineers. A bracket-less design isn't hard to imagine (spring-loaded, a simple strap, etc.)...

Heck with the silm all we did was remove the orginal's HD from the encaseing. And put some thing to stablize the drive in the bay. We used the foam packing around the slim as a brace. So you don't need a mounting braket, they want you to think you need the bracket to sell you a piece of plastic/metal. Though I'm talking about the 360 the same thing applies here.

Actually I'm just thinking Sony aren't too worried about substantially lifting sales with the slim until after PS4 comes out. They know slim will sell at a reasonable rate for the next year. So there's no reason to try to boost sales by cutting profits in the final year that PS3 is the brand's flagship. In fact by the look of slim I'd be embarassed to call PS3 the brand's flagship. They just want sales to continue at the current level and help generate better profits until PS4 launches.

It's clear from what Kaz has said recently that gaming is being positioned to be their profit leader. That means selling consoles at profit or break even from here on and they need Slim to establish that pattern from the start.

Wanted that price cut bad didn't you? Maybe it hasn't reached that price point because Sony realizes, no matter how cheap it becomes it will never sell what it needs to sell to be beneficial to them. By that I mean, if Sony continues to just cut the price like what their fans want so bad, they will never make any money from it.