Sony Readying for Larger HDD PS3 ?

Bloomberg reports that Sony may be considering a new SKU for the PS3 with a larger hard drive. This follows closely on the heels of the announcement of the Xbox 360 Elite and the 120 gig Xbox HD. No other details are provided, in a story primarily about news of increased profits as PS3 sales continue to rise. " Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer targets an operating profit margin of 5 percent by March 2008, about double the current margin. Tokyo-based Sony confirmed today that it will only sell a more expensive version of its PlayStation 3 game console in North America, a strategy it adopted for the European market to bolster margins. 'Profit margin will probably exceed 5 percent if Sony doesn't lower the price of PlayStation 3,' Hitoshi Kuriyama, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. wrote in a report dated yesterday. He rates the stock a buy. Shares of Sony gained 28 percent this year, compared with a 0.8 percent advance in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average."

Possible downgrade for the rest of the system...

[jonnythan]

"Sony also indicated that additional changes may be on the way, not all of them good. Users may want to gobble up PS3 units now, for fear that Sony actually starts to make some electronics cutbacks to curb their current $1.7 billion (yes, with a 'B') loss currently on the books for PS3. Sony stated that it would not pull back on the Cell processor or BD (Blu-ray Disc) drive or networking ability - but nearly everything else is fair game for either enhancements (plan on premium costs) or removal/downsizing (think memory/cache and possibly secondary chipsets.)"

Source: http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry-news/sony -adds-larger-drive-to-ps3.html [audioholics.com]

Re:How about spending R&D time/money on games?

[nuzak]

Every complaint about the PS3 has been related to the games themselves and how there isn't really a single "killer app" for the system.

They're in the pipe -- GTA4 would sell one for me.

Most of the complaints I've heard from actual owners of the PS3 have to do with its lack of scaling. Playing a 720p game on a 1080-only screen? Tough luck bitch, it's 480i for you. Playing a 1080 blu-ray movie on a 720-only screen? You're back to 480i.

They can find time to update the firmware for a goddam folding@home client though. Screw them.

Upgrade that HD

[king-manic]

You are all aware that you can drop any SATA HD into the system right? So making a new unit with nothing but a bigger HD would be counter productive. They'd have to add something like a sony memcard reader and maybe include 3 controllers to make it worth while.

Re:Possible downgrade for the rest of the system..

[amuro98]

Does the software emulator actually upscale the graphics? I know that originally, Sony wanted to use a software emulator, and that it was planned to upscale the PS2 game graphics.

When they couldn't get adequate performance from the emulator in time for the launch, they switched to the hardware solution. With the European launch they switched back to the emulator but I haven't heard it does anything for the games.

Even if this were true, you're still looking at a trade off: Better compatibility (hardware solution) or better graphics (software emulator). Currently the emulator only supports a small percentage of the total number of titles available. Depending on how you count, it's even worse than the Xbox 360's emulator. Even then, the PS3's hardware solution still had problems with many PS2 games.

Either way, it really seems like people will be holding on to their PS2s a lot longer than they did for their PS1's.

SKU?

[Lisandro]

If you are baffled by this acronym, as i was just moments ago, take a second to read this fantastic post [slashdot.org].

Can we cut this shit already?

hmm

[Pojut]

Hey sony, how about instead of making a system with a larger hard drive as an option you try to find ways to cut down on the manufacturing costs so you can lower the price of the current 60 gig model? Who knows, mabye you will get more people like me who aren't buying the PS3 primarily because of the price...

It's not that I can't afford it, it's that I can't justify it.