SCEE (Sony Europe) president, David Reeves, let out a significant bit of news with regards to the US market. When Sony introduced a 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 with Motorstorm bundled at the system's original price point of $599, no one ever thought that it would be the only model available for purchase after July 31st. Many people simply assumed that Sony would still be offering the 60GB version from here on out at the $499 price. It appears that those assumptions are false as Sony will be phasing out the 60 GB model in the US market by the end of this month.

How concerned are you about possible criticisms that you should have given European consumers what SCEA has given US consumers, i.e. the option to pay a lower price?
Well, they're not really are they, because what the US are offering from the 1st of August is a USD 599 version with one game. All they're doing is taking their stock in trade that they've got at the moment of the 60GB model, marking the price down and it will all be gone by the end of July.

So once the 60GB is gone, that will be the end of the 60GB then?
In America, yes.

Why not offer the 80GB model in Europe?
The difference between 60GB and 80GB is not really necessary. The difference in cost between a 60 and 80 is just Euro cents; it's nothing, because the cost of memory is so small.

Probably we could have gone for 80GB, but does it really make any difference? We just know that we get a better supply on the 60GB than we will on the 80GB. So we chose to continue with the 60GB until we find that we can get something better, maybe lower cost. It just didn't seem necessary to us.

So if you want to pick up a "cheaper" model of the PlayStation 3 with the 60 GB drive, you had better do so soon; however, even at this point in time the $499 PlayStation 3 still still hard to recommend as the game lineup is still very weak and will be for the next few months. Perhaps that bit of information wasn't mentioned was to see if Microsoft would take the bait and drop the price of their console. It appears that Microsoft made the right decision in holding off their plans for the price reduction.

E3: David Reeves Talks PS3 [gamesindustry.biz]