I am wondering how much does it cost Sony to upgrade the previous 60Gb model of the PS3 to an 80 GB model.  Are they actually cutting their losses on the Price cut with this.  I am not complaining, I think it's clever on Sony's part, but I am just trying to get someone who knows about this stuff to talk.

I think it gives them a way to sell a $600 console with near the cost as the 60 GB. (the add-in of motorstorm.)

Well at least that motorstorm will be in the top 50 in the charts for a while.

The 80GB version actually costs less because of the backward compatibility change.

 you serious? thats actually very funny but i guess they are starting to get somewhere close to making some $ out of each console sold. Does any1 know anynew info about how much it costs them to make each 1?

I have a question, will it have controllers that rumble? We have been hearing about the new sixaxis controllers for a while, so wouldn't it make sense to put it in the 80 gig bundle.

I bet they are and only the 80 gb models. That way they can push the more expensive version on us, and get rid of their supply of shitty controllers at the same time. Eventually though I would think they would include it in both.

I think I see where this 80 gb model is going too. Maybe they are hoping for another 20gb model situation and so they can just cut out the 60 altogethor. I am impressed with Sony today... Maybe they have changed. Lets see what happens at E3 then.

PS3 costs are going down anyway, I'm assuming because the Blu Ray player just dropped in price big time.

Is it already official that the 80 GB version won't have the Emotion Engine?

Last I checked, the backwards compatibility in the PAL PS3 wasn't anywhere near perfect yet. Would Sony risk having two models with different backwards compatibility for sale in the same country?

I think so, North America looks like it'll have the first NTSC PS3's with software emulation. I believe the software emulation working rate is somewhere around 75%, but I'm not exactly sure and I think they might have updated that with the last major firmware update as well.

We all knew it was going to happen, they pretty much laid it out when they first took out the hardware emulation that they're doing it to cut costs and it'll follow through to all future PS3's. And what'll probably happen is now they're only making 80gigs which will eventually phase out the 60gigs and then drop the price on them to make the 80gig the sole SKU at $499 (or lower depending on how long it takes?).

As for cutting costs, they've been doing things like greater production to lower the costs of parts, the software emulation, and they're working on 65nm parts as well. Not to mention the cost of these components will drop over time as well.