I'm so glad somebody else see's this. The consumer is not as important as the money they provide.

Most of the components they are taking out arent that expensive to begin with. Do you really think they can knock off 200 or more $ off the production of the ps3 just like THAT? I highly doubt it.

I wish they'd pack something useful in with it, like a shoehorn or an egg-salad sandwich, instead of Spider-man 3.

I disagree.  I would argue that in Brazil and a couple other south american countries the passion for football is ATLEAST as passionate.

The Ivory Coast is another contender as well.  When their team made it into the world cup the country called a truce on their civil war so they could support their soccer team.

For Europe, people forget that the PS3 was $600 in the USA WITH the EE chip.
Europe NEVER got that chip, and we were paying 600 €!!
So that means they were making europeans for more than $600 for less. And yes, even when you remove VAT and all, it still comes more like $680. That's for a crippled PS3 without the EE chip.
Beside, the PS3 is more than 9 months old, so I hope for them they reduced their costs.

I would not surprised to learn that they shaved off $200 from the Isupply estimates which were stupid to begin with (especially on the BluRay part).

It's less than $680 if you take out all the fees and higher cost of distribution in the EU.Let's take the UK as an example. 17.5% VAT (not the highest in Europe by any means), and a 10% import tax (since the PS3 comes from outside the EU).

425 GBP / ( 1.275) in USD = 681.4 usd

That's before any fees and retailer margins apply! 

Then why are you here? This is the Sony forum. I pretty much said the same thing about anything Microsoft, but you don't see me trolling the Microsoft forums telling everyone how I'm not going to buy their products.

Any mods reading this? 

Hello If the play.com quote is true, you should give a link to it because i have just checked the site and didnt see any new ps3, only 6 packs with the old 60Go one. Bye.

woot woot Deutschland.

Well both of you are missing something. The bulk of the 60GB PS3's were manufactured before Sony was able to bring the costs per unit down. Its the main reason they are clearancing those units. Its cheaper for them to manufacture the 80GB model. The units they are selling for $499 are the ones thats cost them over $800 to manufacture. Depending on who you believe Sony either makes a small profit, breaks even, or loses a small amount on the 80GB models. Taking out the GS, two usb ports, and the card readers may save Sony $40 to $50 tops. They are dropping the price to $399, which means they'd be losing more on the 40GB models than they would the 80GB models. Not to mention that removing the GS will mean that the 40GB models won't have any backwards compatiblity. It may be possible that sometime in the future they will be able to fully emulate the PS2 CPU (EE) and the GPU (GS) but the current software emulation only covers the EE (Emotion Engine).