There's no doubt that Microsoft's Xbox 360 will have the price advantage this holiday season, and if you were hoping to see a bona fide price cut following Sony's introduction of the $399.99 80GB PlayStation 3, you'll probably be waiting 'til late 2009. Speaking at the Gamer 3.0 conference in London this week, Sony's own Ray Maguire was quoted as saying that the pressure for a price drop from consumers was always there, but given that it "has a business to run" and shareholders to please, it probably won't be decreasing the PS3's price before the end of 2008. He also stated that "at the moment, there's a market place for the PS3," and that "the price of the console [won't] be an issue at all." In all honesty, he's probably right -- after all, this will be the first holiday season where Blu-ray isn't competing with some other physical HD format, and c'mon, you know you'll pay a premium to dabble in Life with PlayStation.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Although Sony announced that the updated 80GB PS3 "Core" configuration would come to the States in September, it looks like other parts of the world will be getting it a little earlier -- Sony Computer Entertainment Europe chief David Reeves told reporters last night that the new SKU would hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand on August 27th. Worldwide pricing wasn't announced, but Sony confirmed that the new model would cost £299 in Britain and €399 in Europe. Sadly, it doesn't look like the Playstation Store's new video service will be making the trip anytime soon, but Reeves said that Sony is "working on it." That's great -- we're still more interested in a 60GB launch console, though.


[Thanks, Matt]

Sony Europe president David Reeves has never been one to shy away from making bold statements in the past, and he's now come out and weighed in on another touchy subject, with him flatly telling attendees at the DevStation conference in London that "there is a piracy problem on the PSP." What's more, Reeves went so far as to admit that it "sometimes fuels the growth of hardware sales, but that "on balance", Sony is "not happy about it." To that end, Reeves says that Sony will soon be unveiling new ways to combat piracy on the handheld, although he unsurprisingly isn't getting a whole lot more specific than that at the moment.

[Via PSP Fanboy]

2008 was predicted to be a big year for the PS3, and it looks like things are going according to plan: Sony announced today that European PS3 sales had topped the five million mark, and that the PS3 has been outselling the Xbox 360 sur le continent since October. Combined with the PS3's strong US showings lately, and that's a pretty solid run -- and we'd assume things are only get to get better once MGS4 hits in June. Hmm, looks like a few of you decided to take the plunge after all.

[Thanks, Nimro]

Apparently Sony has decided to start both hangin' tough and unleashing the fury in the console wars, at least in Europe. According to SCEE president, CEO, and player-hater David Reeves, 2008 will be the year that the PlayStation 3 takes the gloves off and makes a nasty dent in the UK games market, amongst others. While not specifying official sales numbers for the machine, Reeves stated that the company has sold over a million systems in December across PAL territories, and went on to say that in some markets like Switzerland and France, the PS3's installed base outnumbers the Xbox 360's. Of course, it's easy to find small victories like monthly sales figures, but Sony's really going to have to break out the BFGs if it wants to tackle the big boys.

[Via Pocket-lint]

European gamers hoping to score a PS3 with a larger-than-60GB hard drive had better bust out their screwdrivers -- Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president David Reeves isn't planning on selling that 80GB PS3 in your hood anytime soon. Writing for MCV, Reeves says the larger hard drive only makes sense in a market like South Korea, which has "very high broadband penetration and the people there are used to downloading content, so they require a certain size hard drive." Ouch, way to underestimate your customers -- better start downloading more movies, Europe. Reeves goes on to say that he doesn't "feel" competing with Xbox Live since Sony is in a "different stadium," and that it doesn't have "eyes on the competition in any way." We're not going to tackle that one, except to point out that if Sony was looking at the competition, it might notice that 120GB hard drive said competition now has available.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

We'll admit, we're feeling starting to feel for you folks in Europe, as not only do you now have to actually pay attention to where you're driving, but the PlayStation 3 you were planning on snagging exactly one month from today might be hamstringed right out of the box. According to comments made by David Reeves, president of SCEE, support for PS2 titles will indeed be limited, as he stated that "rather than concentrating on PS2 backwards compatibility, company resources will be increasingly focused on developing new games and entertainment features exclusively for PS3." It seems that original PlayStation titles won't be hindered all that much, but the situation looks fairly dire for your current PlayStation 2 discs. The actual list of compatible titles won't be published until launch day, and while it was noted that future titles could be added through PlayStation Network downloads, a Sony spokesperson purportedly stated that "backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as in the US and Japanese models." The reason, while still not pinpointed, could potentially be linked to the Euro-spec'd PS3 rocking a "new chassis" designed to bring manufacturing costs of the console down, which might have demanded some hardware cutbacks somewhere along the line. Regardless of the "why," it looks like UK users could get snubbed by Sony once again, so we seriously hope your PS2 won't mind sharing cabinet space with its newfangled sibling come March 23rd.

[Thanks, Stoo and Ryan]