U.S. may get 80GB PlayStation 3
Sony said Wednesday that it is considering putting out a new version of its struggling PlayStation 3 video game console in the United States with an 80GB hard drive. That's the storage capacity that will come on the South Korean version of the PS3.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sony is floating a bigger hard drive for a console still weighed down by its launch price: two months after reports that a PS3 price cut may be ahead, the company says it is considering an 80GB U.S. model matching the configuration already confirmed for South Korea. The Korea Times pickup of the same story frames the extra storage around video-on-demand services — the read being that capacity here serves downloaded video, not just game installs.
The news lands in the middle of a dense Sony hardware day: the company has also confirmed PS3 firmware 1.80 adding full 1080p upscaling for DVDs, PS2 and PS1 games, plus a camera-and-microphone add-on bringing voice and video calls to the PSP over wireless internet. Together they sketch a strategy of refreshing existing hardware's media credentials rather than cutting price outright.
First-order effects
- U.S. buyers gain the prospect of a higher-capacity PS3, but only as an unconfirmed consideration — the 80GB drive is settled for South Korea, not yet for America.
- If the 80GB model ships alongside the 60GB, Sony's own U.S. retail channel faces internal competition, forcing a decision between discounting existing 60GB inventory and phasing it toward clearance.
Second-order effects
- Bigger drives make Sony's video-on-demand ambitions more practical on the console, pulling the PS3 further toward media-partnership territory and making download services part of the value pitch.
- Storage becomes Sony's differentiation lever in place of a straight price cut — the cheaper way to raise perceived value without touching the list price that analysts flagged back in March.
Third-order effects
- Hard-drive capacity is emerging as a recurring SKU-refresh tool for consoles, letting Sony reposition a struggling product repeatedly without formal price reductions.
- Tiered storage pushes the PS3's economics toward the living-room media hub, tying console sales to consumer uptake of downloaded video rather than disc-based software alone.
The trend: Console makers facing weak early demand are turning to storage tiers and media features — rather than headline price cuts — to recast their machines as living-room hubs.