203w ago - According to Arstechnica's favorite inside source, a price drop is coming to both the Sony PS3 and Microsoft XBox 360 consoles this fall.
To quote: Since we can't name the source, we're treating all this information as rumor, but the Mole's reputation in the industry for breaking large stories and outstanding track record for accuracy speaks for itself.
The 80GB model is going to see some serious hardware constraints in the weeks ahead, and retailers have about 60 days worth of inventory before the systems will become hard to find. Expect to see many more 160GB units on store shelves.
Those units have no constraints yet, but if the retailers sell through that supply as quickly as they did the 80GB, Sony is in a good place for the final part of its plan in 2009: dropping the price of hardware and launching the
PS3 Slim in the fall.
Expect the Xbox 360 Pro to disappear in July or August, but you're going to see some solid bundles to get those systems moving off store shelves. The Halo 3/Fable 2 bundle the Mole previously tipped us off to shows that Microsoft is willing to put some good games into the box to get people buying.
So what are we going to do without the Pro systems? Nothing. The Elite units, with the 120GB hard drive, are going to become the Pro-level system after an early September price cut. We'll be on the lookout for another holiday bundle as well, and that should hit around October.
Blu-Ray - the new UMD; probably not but unless DVD this hasn't really taken off with a bang!, I wouldn't call this feature a complete failure but they really would have been better off with a DVD drive and maybe an external addon to Blu-Ray (like MS did with HD-DVD).
Lastly XDR Memory - XDR memory is owned by Rambus, and overall it is not used by anything other than the PS3 (that I know of), there is a good reason why XDR memory never really caught on and that is because it is overpriced and uses proprietary technologies, pretty much all Rambus wants is people to start using their patented memory architectures while they sit back and collect huge royalties. Recently they released they're 7.20ghz XDR memory which uses 40% less power than GDDR5, impressive but worthless as no one will use it. Another reason why the PS3 has such a massive price tag.