PS3 doing the 'upgrade dance' with 80GB HDD?

[Oobgarm]

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/29/sony-files-for-80gb-ps3-says-there-are-no-current-plans/

Perhaps this is some insight as to why there are fewer and fewer 20GB models at retail. Maybe they'll drop the 20GB model entirely, bump the 60GB down to the $499 price and put the 80GB at the $599 price.

Might help their cause. Might not. Who knows?

[64Bits]

This seems sort of pointless, but whatever.....it must make sense to Sony.

[jajaja]

Ye, that seems like a logical reason. I wonder if/when it will happend.

[heybtbm]

Why are MS, Nintendo and now Sony so shortsighted when it comes to storage? It's not like a 120 GB drive is that much more expensive to produce than a 20 GB. Why didn't they just start off with these big hard drives in the first place?

[Ed Oscuro]

It's not like a 120 GB drive is that much more expensive to produce than a 20 GB. Why didn't they just start off with these big hard drives in the first place?
Because going forward eight years in technology isn't free. Current pricing on Newegg for Hitachi notebook (2.5") drives:

20 GB - $30 to $45

120 GB - $83

Now, the prices of these smaller drives are far higher than those of regular 5.25" drives, but the PlayStation 3 uses a small drive like these. Indeed, the prices are undoubtedly higher because the PS3 uses the high-performance SATA connection (no clue if the 360 uses regular ATA or what, but ATA is shit compared to SATA, based on having switched to SATA a few years back). These prices should be illustrative of why Sony did not go with the 120 GB drive earlier - note also that months have passed and prices have dropped.

Regular ATA 5.25" hard drives aren't really that different a story either. 20 GB models (all in ATA) have been obsolete for a long while, and could be bought en masse for essentially nothing, but 120 GB models (again, the cheaper, long surpassed ATA type) cost roughly $53-$71 even today, which in our hypothetical PS3-with-crap-drive model scenario is still adding a good deal onto the cost of building a PS3.

The keys here are to not confuse 5.25" drives with what the PS3 uses, and also not to confuse ATA with SATA.

[Ed Oscuro]

This seems sort of pointless, but whatever.....it must make sense to Sony.
The score stands like this:

Xbox 360 - No guarantee that advanced games will justify using hard drive due to guaranteed loss of sales.

PlayStation 3 - Guaranteed to allow developers access to megabytes of data for use in streaming.

Microsoft leaving out the hard drive was pointless (and rendered many of the benefits of a hard drive worthless to developers, who cannot insist consumers buy the outrageously expensive 20GB drive at $99 just to play their games). Sony is giving consumers a choice between having a simple hard drive which will give gamers the benefits of streamed data, or buying a larger drive for people who will be buying large numbers of games (I never came close to filling up the original Xbox's drive) or using the PS3 for other applications (entertainment, maybe even computing).