The PS3 now is most definitely not stripped down. The 40 gig (well now 80-160 gig) fits a ton of gamers needs instead of the 60 gb. I would much rather have my 40 (turned 250) gig that runs silent and cool than my friends 60gb ps3 that is hot and the fan kicks on after 20 minutes of use. I don't need backwards compatibilty or card readers, plain and simple. The most logical piece of hardware they could take out of the ps3 would be the wifi card, but whos to say that would even save Sony that much money. I think they got the sku's right this time around.

Lets assume for a moment it was true...

Games -

The Internet - They would need to be delivered via the internet and as these are humongous due to the need to fill up the Blu Ray disc in the first place this seems unlikely. Also this mechanism would need to be communicated at retail. After the salesman has come back from his what is the difference Router/Switch/Hub/Modem training he might just stand a chance of getting this over to the public.

DVD9 - They produce special versions on DVD9 spanned discs. Possible but would require game houses to retro supply which seems unlikely also this would need to be communicated at retail and the punters to accept it.

HDDVD - They switch to HD DVD, cough enough said.

Movies -

No Blu Ray player. Lets face it, HD DVD was only defeated because of the trojan that is the capability to watch HD movies. Without the PS3 consoles it is unlikely given the relative maturity of HD DVD that the Blu Ray solution would of prevailed.

So assuming they managed to overcome all this if we are then to believe that the general public will be willing to buy this crippled version of the PS3 even at a vastly cheaper price (I guess they managed to sell them after taking away the BC but lets face it this is on another level).

Come on give the consumers some credit. I mean how expensive could this be now that it could actually make that much of a difference to overcome the obvious shortfalls. This is a case of you made your bed lie in it, 21 million units have been sold to retail so at least you have plenty of company in that bed.

this is stupid. there is no way they'll fragment their user base like that.

Someone is probably making this insane prediction just to show off.

No Blu-Ray on PS3? This is, by a wide margin, the stupidest idea I've ever seen put forth by an analyst.

Same here, and that's saying a lot, because I have seen some pretty wide margins, if you know what i mean.

So is this new non-blu ray PS3 only going to be used for internet browsing, dvd watching, and playing downloadable games?

Exactly.

Ps3 = Blu-Ray. Games are on Blu-Ray. Blu-Rays are on Blu-Ray, so if you want to watch some Blu-Ray, you'll need to buy a Blu-Ray, I mean Ps3.

And this guy probably makes more money than any of us...wow...PS3 would only be allowed to play newer games...it would be a system launch, all over again...