Sony Playstation 3A couple days ago I talked about how the PS3 was getting a $100 price cut. In that blog post I questioned how much good it would do. Compared to now with the PS3 priced at $499 for the 20 gig version and $599 for the 60 gig version. the $100 price cut came by lowering the 60 gig version by $100 bucks, doing away with the 20 GIG version and adding a 80 gig version for $599. Even though there is a $100 dollar price cut, you still end up with the PS3 costing the same as before, $499 and $599.

Today I was browsing Crunch Gear and found out a little more details about what Sony is doing with the PS3 that pretty much cancels out the price cut all together…not quite but it does.

No more 60 GIG PS3 in the US

Yep you heard it, the $100 dollar price cut for the 60 gig PS3 will be a short lived discount. Sony is planning on doing away with the 60 gig skew in the US. So once all of the 60 gig versions of the PS3 is sold, there will only be the 80 gig versions for sale in the US. The 80 gig version, so far, will carry the price tag of $599. I just don’t see how this will help sales at all. Of course they added a larger hard drive but the price tag is still $599, the same price that is too expensive now and pretty much keeping the PS3 from making a bigger impact.

No Emotion Engine = No native backwards compatibility

In addition to doing away with the 60 GIG version of the PS3, another bit of news makes things look a tad bit worse. The 80 gig version that will be sold in the US will not have the Emotion Engine. What does that mean? Well if you didn’t know, the Emotion Engine is the processor that powers the PS2. That engine was included with the PS3 in order to make sure all of your PS2 games will also play in the PS3. Doing away with that engine takes away that native backwards compatibility. Which has been one of Sony’s bragging points. Don’t worry though, that doesn’t mean that there will be no "back-compat" it just means that it has to be done in software, like the Xbox 360. It also means that there will be less PS2 games that will work with the PS3.

Sony must feel really confident that the PS3 will eventually take off on its own. Who knows, maybe it will. Some of the highly anticipated games are going to start hitting the store shelves soon…that may help.