At this point Sony has given many consumers precious little to deserve their "benefit of the doubt", even if this is a "good" marketing move, its really more of a good move for themselves than it is for the consumer. Even if you could argue this new SKU was a step in the right direction, one step forward after sixteen steps back is hardly something that can be merited as virtue or for that matter alot anyone "benefit of the doubt".

Forgive my directness, but your argument is essentially little more than scapegoating, outsourcing of blame and self-imposed victimization. You've basically convinced yourself that Sony can do no wrong by the very merit that you've condemned others of saying it can do no right. If you want to hear only what you want to hear and see only what you want to see, then that is fine and I do not fault you for that, however what I do fault you for though is trying to force that on others.

And before you try it, this matter is and has only ever been about holding a Company accountable for its actions, so spare me the accusations of bias.

Here's the timeline for the PS3 sku's in the US.

Launch: 20gb and 60gb models at $500 and $600, respectively. There's almost no 20gb supply because Sony loses about $50 more on each one of those that they sell, and as such the 60gb sells a lot more. They then use that as an excuse to discontinue the 20gb model by saying that nobody wants it even though it was sold out everywhere. They start their rhetoric about how the consumer wants there to be only one model so they're going to stick to the one-model system, obviously taking a dig at the 360.

July: Sony tries to spur sales by announcing a price cut on the 60gb of $100, which sounds impressive until you realize that they aren't making any more of them because they're introducing another model that they lose less money on so they're going to discontinue the older one. Reiterate that they learned their lesson with the 20gb and are going to stick with one model for the long-term.

October: Less than 3 months later, Sony brings out yet another new model which is so gimped compared to the higher-end model it's almost like the 360 Core/Premium. At least they drop the price of the 80gb to match their price cut on the 60gb now that it's pretty much out of stock, but they can't really claim any PR credit for it since they already blew it in July. Now after nearly a year of saying they want to stick with one sku 'cause that's what the consumers want, and how BC is the most important thing in the PS3 because they're attacking the 360, they suddenly do an about-face and reverse both of their long-time philosophies just to put out a cheap model for Xmas to try and trick people into buying in. On top of that the 40gb actually still loses more money than the 80gb so they're reportedly going to limit its supply here in the same way that they did with the 20gb so that next spring they can just drop it altogether and maybe drop the 80gb in price and probably introduce yet another model.

Does this sound negative? Sure. But putting out 4 systems and discontiniuing 2 others in less than a year is a dizzying approach and not likely to win over many customers, especially with the aggressive way they're trying to force in customers.

I want to like the PS3 but so far it's still more expensive and has sub-par games when compared to the 360 and Sony is just making a mess of it at every turn. They even admitted that the reason they took out BC isn't to save cost, but to force people to buy PS3 games. Yes, that's right, for the first time BC actually bit them in the ass because people were buying PS3's and then realizing it had no games so they bought a bunch of PS2 games to go with it. The solution is apparently not to make better/more PS3 games -- a limitation caused by the expense of developing for the system which was their design to begin with -- but to restrict the ability to play PS2 games altogether. And if you really think the 80gb is gonna be around forever with its already limited BC you really haven't been paying attention for the past year.

Okay, rant over. ;>

wow, great post.  When they said that they were getting rid of BC to encourage people to buy PS3 games I thought it was just a lie, I thought it was just because they wanted to hit the $400 price point.  I thought they would undersupply the 40 gig because they lost more money on it.  It seems like there is a big supply of 40 gigs in europe which isn't a terrible thing if the 60 gigs weren't dissappearing. 

Are they honestly crazy enough to have no SKUs on the market with BC in them?  I'm just not sure anymore.

Your (1) cannot be the case. Remember back in July when Microsoft blew the whistle on Sony's plans to release a 40GB model? That's more than enough time to build up supply before they finally put it on the market.

(2) isn't likely the case.  No one is going to be surprised by the amount of demand -- it might be a bit higher than the $500 model, but $100 isn't going to get people to buy it in droves.

Ultimately, #4 is their primary interest.  They want to sell the $500 model to everyone who is willing to buy it, but also get sales from people only willing to pay $400 for a console.  Those people will just have to look harder.  Sony is trying to increase their overall sales, but they probably don't want to sell the cheaper model unless the person simply would not get a PS3 if it didn't exist.