Sony has said that the PS3 60gb is being phased out. They are essentially phasing out hardware emulation on the emotion engine. They have stated once large stock of 60gb PS3s are depleted, they will reassess the market and adjust accordingly. This means that it is highly likely that the 80gb SKU will drop in price when the 60gb is run out (Early August).

It might be best to wait until the end of august to get a PS3. The 5 blu-ray deal is good until the end of september (I think) so you have ample time.

Notice I never made a prediction one way or the other, because I don't KNOW.  None of us do.

I think you are being pretty optimistic about when the 60 GB version will run out Cole.  Nobody knows how many consoles they've produced for sure, but I very much doubt they'd sell all of them in less than a month.

Dudes, just looking at the topics under gaming in Digg has given me a headache about this subject alone!

Off topic but at any rate: Yesterday I went out and bought a brand new PS3 due to the price "adjustment."

Curiously my Father In law was tired of 360 due to a variety of reasons, many were rather dubious in my view, but he gave me his 360 to trade in for credit to apply to the purchase.

So I wound up paying $370 for a new PS3! 360 will not be in contention in my opinion until perhaps the new Falcon models permanently fix all the major hardware problems to acceptable consumer standards. But from what I hear, this isn't even attempting to fix the disc scratching issues.

I think one thing is for certain; This price drop fubar has really put a dent in all the steam sony picked up from their good press conference.

Not nessesarily. The drop of the $500 dollar price point will be a point of interest for consumers. Since they will not be able to get it for that price once they are gone, consumers will rush out and buy now, instead of later, what the SKU could be 600 dollars again.

That being said, this could all just be extremely good marketing from Sony.  We shall see. 

as I didn't check VGChartz yesterday, has it been confirmed then that Sony is DEFINATELY phasing out the 60gb model. That's discounting rumors and articles from not 99% trustworthy sources.

The Current 60 gb model is being Phased out yes but it is not being replaced with the 80 gb model . Instead North America will be getting the 60 GB model without the Emotion Engine to operate PS1 and PS2 games and will have to rely on software to play games. The guy from Sony Europe was either misinformed or didn't quite express what he wanted to say but either way I think Sony is saying a 499 version is here to stay. Hell without the hardware to push PS1 ans PS2 games maybe we could see and additional price cut on the 60gb by Christmas or a  60 Gb model with a game for 499.

The problem here is optimist assume all consumers are eager-to-pounce Sony cheerleaders. The fact of the matter is, a price cut for an older version with a newer version comming out basically makes the older version quite suspicious in the eyes of the consumer if not to a certain degree more undersireable then it would have been before hand. Given the casual consumer's typical perception of video game consoles having technical issues this generation and last it wouldn't be atypical for them to attribute the abandonment of an older model to defects or undesireable performance especially with all the fuss about firmware updates and what not to make the Ps3 do what it should have out of the box. On that note, will this newer version even fix all those issues? But then again, this pesimism isn't any more founded in many regards than the optimism fluffing this thread so let's move on to some tangible hypotheticals shall we?

If $500 instead of $600 dollars isn't enough to sway people's passions to buy a PS3 to begin with, why would you think that announcing the fact that the said $500 dollar version is now essentially dated and inferior to an upcomming better version is going to help its sales any? Did the inferior $500 20gb PS3 sell well in comparison to the $600 60gb PS3? No. So I fail to see how this is going to be any different. History people, History, it repeats itself.

If Nintendo had done something to this effect for the Wii, it would have been cursed by Sony Fanboys across the land as Nintendo forsaking the customer for a cheap buck and not doing the job right the first time. Yet surprise surprise I see people here cutely trying to put a positive twist on the whole debacle for their Sony console as if this is some master stroke in a long played Chess Game of marketing.

If this is such a good thing or non-issue (as I see it played both ways at the mercy of the optimists' arguments) then why did Sony Fanboys on this forum go apeshit with rage after it was announced? Why has Sony fanboy trolling been at an all time high? You can feign confidence but you can't hide your fear.

Ok everybody, ckmlb's opinion = fact, the sooner we all accept this the sooner he can let us know what else is gauranteed to happen in the VG industry despite having absolutely zero evidence.