The North American market knew that it would only be a matter of time before the 40GB PS3 and a price drop of the 80GB version was confirmed. It was rumoured that Sony were holding off announcing the new deals in that region because they still had huge stockpiles of the 60GB units and they were hoping to shift as many as possible before the new units cames in to effectively replace them.

The President of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Jack Tretton, has confirmed that the 40GB PS3 will go on sale on November 2nd and will retail at $400, whereas the 80GB will see a drop in price from $600 to $500.

The two new deals were launched across Europe on October 10th and according to Chart-Trak figures there's been a surge in sales of the PS3 (they did cunningly omit from their report exactly how many units a 'surge' means).

The only difference between the 40GB and 80GB PS3s, apart from storage space, is that the new console will have two less USB ports and won't feature PS2 backwards compatibility.

Source :: Reuters