Despite the fact that Sony’s Playstation was among the first of the currently available consoles to hit the market (not included older generation consoles like Sega’s Saturn or the Nintendo 64) it’s been losing some ground to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 which has recorded considerably higher sales in the last period. Not intending to trail behind Microsoft at all, Sony has recently released two new Playstation 3 models at Gamescom. One of the models is bundled with the company’s upcoming ‘Move’ motion control peripheral and offers considerably higher storage space consisting of a 320GB hard drive.
The other also got a storage boost and is now equipped with a 160 GB hard drive. This version is already shipping and available for $299.99 (the price of the current model with a 120GB hard drive). Of course, you might have known this since morning, because several websites like Amazon and Newegg already posted it for the previously mentioned price. Next month the Playstation Move bundle, which includes one controller, a copy of Sports Champion, the PlayStation Eye camera and a Blue-ray game demo disc, will also start shipping for a price of $399.99.
According to Sony’s Computer Entertainment America hardware marketing director John Koller, Playstation 3 users are storing considerably more content such as downloadable games, movies and videos on their consoles. “The PlayStation 3 is increasingly turning into that kind of one and only living room hub with tons of photos, music and personal videos that you play on the system as well. Those are adding up” he said.
Koller added: “we really are trying to adapt to the needs of our consumer by giving them larger hard drives rather than them having to go out and purchase them in kind of an ancillary fashion. … What we really want to avoid is anyone having to delete content as a result of hitting that ceiling of space. The 160 and 320-gigabyte models should accommodate quite handily the current demand for network content.”
Just for comparing purposes, Microsoft’s latest Xbox 360 console, the redesigned slim version released in June this year comes with a 250GB hard drive. While this extra storage space the Playstation 3 now provides might please existing Playstation fans and could possibly convince several users of other consoles to switch over to Sony’s side, for the most part I guess it’s the titles available for play that will count the most.
