Most likely in a response to abundant criticism over the cost of their forthcoming next-gen behemoth, Sony announced Friday that "PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3) with 20GB hard disk drive (HDD) will come equipped with HDMI(*) (Ver 1.3/supporting Deep Color) output as standard with the system. PS3 with 20GB HDD will become available in Japan at a new recommended retail price of 49,980 yen (tax included)."

You can read the full press release here.

That's less than $430 USD at today's exchange rate. Now, the announcement only discusses the change in hard drive size, but MTV.com is reporting that the system "will not support WiFi out of the box", as the full version will.

The strange thing about the press release is it makes no mention of the full version, or whether this is a change in the hardware specifications. If it is just a scaled-back system....hmm...$170 for WiFi and 40GB of space? I'll have to think about this one.

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: