A friend of mine has as theory that they keep getting rid of these smaller harddrives because they are able to get the larger ones cheaper in bulk since so comapanies have moved away from the small ones. It certinaly seemed the case for platter sizes, moving from 20 GB(20,60) platter sizes to 40GB(40,80,120).

I have a gut feeling that the era of full software BC is upon us. The other nagging chip has been emulated. Guts of the 120 GB and 40 GB will be the same. So it really will only be one unit for them to produce just slap a different harddrive on it and slightly different software and bam!

With the cost savings of estentially one model a $449/$349 pricepoint is achievable.

We have actually. The 60GB at launch was fully BC.

@dallinor

Incorrect, the 60gb that released in europe did not have the emotion engine.

Yea, I believe the big issue about the European launch was that it didn't have the EE in it, which is what the NA 80gig has. Or rather doesn't have.

 its thefact that the EE was easy to replicate with software. the GS on the otherhand isnt. The PS3 PAL 60GB model as wll as the US 80GB model both has/had roughly 96% BC which was updated and improved a few times so I think its more around 97% now.

Funny how the source of the article doesn't confirm anything and niether does the source of the source.

Soriku, don't spam. 

He can't help himself naz :P

I want full BC because believe it or not, I never owned a PS2 and I want to get in on all the great PS2 games I missed out on. But looks like the 60 gig is the only skew that offers this and it's basically gone now go figure. So full BC was actually one of the main selling points for me, but of course Sony found a way to ruin it. Now I'm thinking I might as well just get a PS2 since there's a lot more PS2 games than PS3 games I want anyway.

Here's a hint, I have 9 Wii games in my profile and 9 GC games.

But I have never owned a GameCube.

So if Nintendo had decided to build a Wii without BC, my game library would be slashed in half. I suppose I would have picked up a couple more Wii games, but I'd rather have all these awesome GC games instead.

BC increases the effective size of a console's library and makes it more attractive to serious gamers. A PS3 with no BC is limited to a relatively small library (though it does hold promise for the future, at least in the short term). A PS3 with full BC gets to include the massive PS2 library in its list of playable games, thereby looking far more attractive to serious gamers.