Is the 80 GB going to stick around? Because I figured it would just take the 60 GB's place and price once it was gone...so nothing really changes.

Assuming those numbers are accurate, I'd Actually, I'd call the PS3 $399 pricing strategy either a stroke of dumb luck or a brilliant marketing maneuver. I'm going to settle on the latter and here's why... The price point was already high for the PS3 -- no two ways about it. Buy creating the cheaper 40 gig version, they answered critics and people mentally say to themselves -- "self, this new sku is affordable. let's go get one". Self then says, "but wait.... since we are now going to buy a PS3, why not spend the small amount (relative) of extra cash and get the games and extra controller? It's a no-brainer, isn't it, self?" Self says yeah, justifies the price that was apparently previously unjustifiable and walks out the door with their shiny new hardware. That's kind of a page from Microsoft's book... they keep the core out there but for just a few dollars more.... you get a hard drive, backward compatibility, wireless, and so on... Obviously that is changing a bit with the arcade version, but still...

Or it could be that everyone who was thinking "I'd like a PS3 for Christmas" suddenly said "Oh shit! If I don't buy a PS3 soon it won't be backwards compatible."

Its the same situation like in NA side, they anounced the discontinue of the 60 gig model and the introduction of the 80 gig model, we see a spike in sales, then it started to drop and the 80 gig model is doing bad right now. I can bet you can still able to find 60 gig models around in NA.

its going to be the same trend in EU, people will rush to get the 60 gig before its gone. It'll be interesting if in a few months sony will introduce the 80 gig model there for the same price. alot of people will cry if sony do so.

That doesn't make sense.  If that was their plan then why discontinue the 60GB?  It's more likely that the 60GB is selling because it's been discontinued and had its price reduced and people are worried they are going to be stuck with the crappy 40GB if they wait any longer.  Yes, it boosts sales, but that type of sales boost is not long lasting (See: US sales boost for PS3 60GB which are now back to horrible levels).  If you use that scare tactic method of boosting sales you are only going to get short temporary boosts and you'll have to continually reintroduce SKUs (a very expensive process) with even less features to try and keep people buying the ones with good features.

Or the simple reality of

350 for console and two games.
300 for just console.



Does not take much brains to figure out what most people will choose.

Umm, this reminds me of prediction number 2 in my sig...

yes, but how well did Sega Saturn sell

 Since when has any PS3 marketing made sense?  They have committed one blunder after another but clearly pricing the 40 and 60 so close to each other with the 60 being a much better "value", you have to figure that it was somewhat intentional in that Sony knew the new sku (combined with comments about the 40 being the only sku at some point in the future) would drive 60 gig sales...   They are obviously losing WAY more money on the 60 than the 40 and selling them is painful but they do need to get them gone so they can focus on losing less money going forward to the path of profitability... The new sku is part of that future plan...  I don't think they expected to sell many 40s given the pricing structure....  Just my .02, of course.  Keep the change.