Lots of Monkeys

Hey, it’s the PS3 pricing announcement. There are two models of PS3, $499 and $599. Let’s look at the differences between the two, based on the press release.

The $500 version is missing more than just hard drive space. Additionally, here’s what you don’t get:

1. No WiFi
2. No Memory Card Reader
3. No HDMI

The WiFi thing is odd to me because implementing WiFi is pretty cheap. At $250, the PSP has WiFi. Hell, at $130 the DS Lite has WiFi. But I guess you could get a USB wireless adapter. Currently this is how the Xbox 360 handles WiFi. Not a big deal here.

No memory card reader, also not a big deal. In theory, you can plug in a USB reader to the PS3 and have it read your media. Unless, they do something to their hardware to make it proprietary. Which would be completely out of character for SONY. All I ask here is that you can use them to save your games. Is that too much?

The no HDMI is going to make some people angry when they try to play a next generation DVD but can’t, because only HDMI supports the crazy ass DRM that the movie houses demanded be on blu-ray. Of course, this is a non issue since most televisions right now don’t even have HDMI connections.

So, if you don’t care about any of these things, sure. I guess it’s worth half a grand. On the other hand, an extra hundred dollars gets you the additional functionality. I’m thinking that all of these bells and whistles are a tad excessive for something that is supposed to be playing games.

And to be honest, I haven’t seen anything that makes me want to spend half a grand on the system just yet. We’ll see how things shake down in the next couple of days of E3.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Now I have to wait for the MicroSoft and Nintendo announcements.