Sony considers larger PS3 drive as Europe booms
updated 03:00 pm EDT, Tue April 17, 2007
Sony PS3 Drive Expansion
Sony is already considering a larger hard drive for the PlayStation 3, the company's SCE divsion admitted today. While the company has alluded to an 80GB model in paperwork, company representative Satoshi Fukuoka for the first time confirmed that the bundled hard disk wasn't set in stone and could see an increase over time.
"For users who vigorously store (games and other entertainment content) in the PS3, 20-giga [20GB] is probably going to be too small," he said. "And even 60-giga [60GB] may not be big enough eventually."
The news may hint at further reshuffling of the PS3 lineup beyond the already significant changes made in the six months since its debut. The company recently scrapped the 20GB model in the US after sagging demand and dropped the Emotion Engine chip from the PS2 for the March worldwide launch, preventing direct backwards compatibility with some older games.
Such a move is likely also a response to the upcoming Xbox 360 Elite, which greatly expanded the capacity of the older Microsoft console to 120GB at a price slightly below the now discontinued 20GB PS3.
Sony today also announced that it had sold 800,000 units in Europe since its March launch, making the continent's introduction far more successful than for the Japanese and North American launches in November. The PS3 didn't suffer from the "perception wars" that made the console seem unnecessarily expensive, according to Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer.
