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