Tuesday, August 18, 2009

One Less Reason Not To Own A PS/3

Sony finally made the announcement today that's been awaited for - literally - many months now: the PS/3 Slim is due to arrive on Sept 1st, and will carry a price tag of just $299 US (not sure what the Canadian equivalent will be, yet, but given the current exchange it shouldn't be more than about $349 CAD). I believe I also read that stores will begin dropping the sticker price for current PS/3s as early as tomorrow, as well. The Slim model sounds similar in functionality to what we're used to from a PS/3 - including, perhaps most importantly, the ability to play Blu-Ray movies - but will be thinner and lighter. It'll also sport a hard drive that's bigger than the one I currently have, if I'm not mistaken! (Not that I care, as I've never come even close to running out of disk space.)

It should be interesting to see what this does for sales, as the much-higher price (compared to an XBox 360 or Wii) is often quoted as the # 1 reason Sony's had relatively poor market share since the launch. It still won't be a steal, but it'll definitely be a bargain! I use my PS/3 for most of the DVDs that we watch these days, making it quite a well-utilized device in this house.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Future Shop has it for pre-order at 299. When the Canadian dollar spiked a while ago Sony bowed to pressure making the PS3 the same amount irrespective of exchange rates. Compared to the exchange rate gouging BestBuy and Future Shop engage in on their standard blu-ray players this price is quite attractive.