I think you missed what I said ...

Sony could easily stop the 40GB model from playing Blu-Ray MOVIES and save money on licencing fees (I'd imagine the licence would be $25 to $50 per system) and by removing any dedicated hardware (potentially, they would have hardware decoders which would no longer be needed).

Hard drive seems to be a no brainer considering up until now all PS3 consoles had a hard drive included so some games that have been released or in development may be broken if they released a new version without one.

BC, I already have spare laptop drives to put in the thing =P

 He wrote "blu-ray liscensing fees", which implies movie playback, as Sony controls the liscensing for PS3 games..

 Plus you have the length backwards. Larger discs allow bigger games to fit on one disc. Developers still have to spend time and money to make those bigger games. Blu-ray's capacity does not eliminate those factors.

 you can do the same thing with the PS3 with media center =P

Hard disk support wouldn't bother me too much - as long as their was a sensible alternative. You can't have a PS3 with *no* storage - its just too crippled.

Other than that, I rate PS2 BC at the top of my list. Still so many awesome PS2 games I am yet to play. I have a PS2 sitting in my living room... but for some reason, I just can't get around to using it. Clunky. No wireless. Composite output. Errgh.

I rate GC support far below PS2 though. I would be a little hurt if Ninty dropped GC support - the last thing I want is to have to setup my GC *again* (as well as other consoles) in my living room.

But PS2 support on a PS3 - for me, its critical.

Backwards compatibility is more important to me, buying memory cards is annoying but not having backwards compatibility means that every time I want to play some older RPG I've got to go drag another system out of the closet and hope it still functions.

can we have a third option?? take out the prize tag will be nice ^^

anyway I dont know about a HD since alot of games still not many game utilize it yet. even downloadable maps addon dont require alot of space. BC is something you take out and cant be put back in, but HD you can always install one yourself when you need it.

 BTW, the abbreviation is HDD, for "hard drive disc", so that there isn't a confusion with HD, for "high definition". That also shows how desperate the electronics industry is to push HD, if the change the abbreviation of something that's been around longer.