Speaking in light of news that the 40GB PlayStation 3 is to be phased out in favour of a high-end 80GB model, SCEI President Kazuo Hirai has reassured consumers who purchased a 40GB SKU that they still own a “very powerful” games machine.
“The PS3 is a console that evolves and specifications will change over time. Ultimately, if the consumers require a higher capacity hard drive, the ability to do that is there,” said Hirai, during an interview with MCV.
“40GB is obviously less than 80GB, but it’s still a high number and a very powerful machine. We strive to evolve and offer the most compelling value we can at any point in time. If consumers require extra hard drive, they can just swap it out.”
“We brought in the 80GB because we wanted to make sure we continued offering the value proposition to consumers in the true fashion of PlayStation.”
Hirai added that consumer feedback on the 40GB machine was positive, but ultimately the influx of downloadable content via the PSN called for a larger hard drive capacity.
"We heard a lot of response from the consumers basically saying 40GB is nice, but with a lot of additional download products were offering via the PlayStation Network, consumers were looking for a higher capacity hard drive.
"We thought it was a great time to introduce it at E3, but also make sure that we continued to keep the pricing the same."