Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) officially announced plans to introduce a 40GB model of the Playstation 3 in North America today. Starting in November, the new 40GB Playstation 3 will be available, bundled with a Blu-ray version of Spider-Man 3 . The new bundle will be available for $399 USD. The big news today, however, is that the price for the system in Canada will also be $399 CAD. That means that SCEA has officially begun matching the Canadian price of its consoles to the American price.

In fact, along with the announcement of the new Playstation 3 model, SCEA announce that, effective immediately, it the price of the 80GB model of the Playstation 3 has been reduced to $499 USD and CAD. The announcement of the price reduction and matching of the Canadian price to the American price, Sony has become the first of the big three video game console manufacturers to compensate for the state of the higher Canadian Dollar.

Finally, for those of our readers who like the technical side of things, here are the specifications for the new 40GB Playstation 3:

CPU - Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (Cell/B.E.)
GPU - RSX(TM)
Sound - Dolby 5.1ch, DTS 5.1ch , LPCM 7.1ch, AAC, others *1 *2
Memory - 256MB XDR Main RAM, 256MB GDDR3 VRAM
HDD - 2.5" Serial ATA 40GB
I/O - USB 2.0 x2
Communication Ethernet - X1 (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T)
IEEE 802.11 b/g - Included
Bluetooth 2.0 - Included

EDR

Wireless controller (Bluetooth) Included
AV Output Screen size/resolution 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI OUT x1 *3
AV MULTI OUT x1
DIGITAL OUT x1

OPTICAL

BD/DVD/CD - Maximum Read Speed BD 2x (BD-ROM)
Drive - DVD 8x (DVD-ROM)
(Read Only) - CD 24x (CD-ROM)
Dimensions - Approximately 12.75in(W) x 3.86in (H) x 10.8in (D)
Weight - Approximately 11 lbs