rocketpig said: Oy. Please stop doing this, Sony.

Just out of curiousity why does everyone think this is Sony's decision?

Best Buy made the decision not to sell the 80 GB.  You will still be able to get it elsewhere.

I think this just speaks to sales of the 80 Gb at Best Buy.  I go there often and only see a 80 Gb move once every few weeks.  The 40 Gb pile at least goes does on a bi-daily basis.

It would piss me off to a ridiculous degree if they dropped BC from all available models. I'm hoping that's not what's going on, though. Here's a comment from PS3fanboy's thread on this:

That does make sense. The other thing to consider is that they need to get ready for the new SKU with the DS3 bundled.

Since I doubt they'd give us a worse deal on the system at this point in its life, my guess is that the new SKU would have no game included, but would give you the option to pick one of your choice off the shelf. That's how it works in Europe, doesn't it? To introduce a new SKU like this, they have to discontinue the old one at some point.

If they're still making 80gb units, they'll probably be using the new 65nm process like the 40gb. So there's another reason to introduce a new SKU and discontinue the old one. While they're at it, they might upgrade the harddrive, or they might not. It's not a really big deal either way.

My guess is that it would remain at the current price, but in the unlikely event that these $299 rumors are true, I guess they'd probably sell it for $399 or $450 (in the latter case, they'd probably boost the HD to 120gb or, better yet, bundle in 2 games instead of one).

The problem is, there's no way to know if this is what's happening or not. With the backward-ass decision making they've been doing, it's just as likely they're canceling BC altogether. We can't count on Sony to tell us, or at least to tell us the truth. We're flying blind here, and I don't like it.

Oh, and:

The letter implies that this decision came from Sony, e.g. "it's going closeout," "Sony hasn't made any announcements about new products." It's also consistent with what they've been doing in other regions.

In any case, even if it's not an official Sony decision, the fact that a major retailer like Best Buy is discontinuing it would suggest there's a good reason to do so -- something that would apply to other retailers too. For instance, maybe it's not selling (I haven't heard anything suggesting that though, which is why I'm hoping my earlier theory about a new SKU is right).

 By the way, Dell.ca, who had all those great deals on the PS3 last month, hasn't been selling the 80gb since Christmas. I thought that was a little suspicious, and it looks likely now that it was part of this same retailer movement.

I really think the 80gb is going in favor of no BC. But there will probably still be a few units on the shelves when they annouce BC being added to the 40GB. So they will have one unit, and it will drop to $299, not this month but sometime this year.

PS2 emulation is coming alone great on the PC so they should have just hired those hackers.

They have said previously they do not like the multi-sku strategy. If not soon I don't expect this multi-tier structure to last.

$299, single SKU, with BC through software? I think its possible.

If they do drop the 80GB model, and don't introduce BC to the 40GB model, I hope they do at least a $30 price drop on the PS2. At least then, people could kindof get the same effect as the 80GB SKU. I'm also hoping to see some white DS3s over here too ^_^

Yeah I heard about this. The way I see it though is that something else is coming.

They have already discontinued all BC models in other regions, it wouldn't be surprising for it to happen in NA as well.

Sony had explicitly stated that they wouldn't be spending another penny on BC. Why does everyone seem to think that they have changed their tune? Have they said anything to suggest this?

they had a job opening a little while back for BC programmer so (as it stands) my bet is on

- Sony discontinuing all models with full hardware or partial hardware backwards compatibility
- After all the 80s are cleared out they will make an announcement that software BC is coming
- owners of 40gb ps3s will get the upgrade for free or for a nominal fee (under $25)

^^^
#3 is a very good idea, hope they do it.