Playstation 3 Price Drops to $249.99 August 17, 2011

Sony has made an unscheduled shift in the console war and dropped the price of the Playstation 3 by fifty dollars.

The Playstation 3 usually has two models out at any given time, one with a lower end hard drive capacity and another with a higher capacity hard drive.  These sizes will change on a regular basis as new models are continuously phased in and out, but the price has remained the same.  Today, that changes.  The lower end Playstation 3 currently at a capacity of 160GB will now cost you $249US, the premium model  PS3, which has a capacity of 320GB, is now $299US.

If you were on the fence about buying a PS3, now would be a good sign to buy one as the price drop is immediate and should be honored by all retailers.

This is not unheard of in the PS3 lifespan.  The first Playstation 3 price drop was done in order to phase out the initial 60GB launch models so they could sell new 80GB units at the 60GB launch price.  Once the 60GB model sold out, Sony replaced them with Playstations with smaller hard drives and less features, particularly they took out Playstation 2 compatibility (which still has not returned).

Currently the PS3 is in last place in this generation of the console war.  Nintendo, even though they are going to launch their next generation console first with the Wii U, has such a far lead ahead of Sony and Microsoft, nobody expects them to be overtaken.  However, Sony does has the chance to take second place from Microsoft before the console generation ends, and this could be a preemptive strike for them to overtake the Xbox 360 in sales by Christmas.  The PS3 is still the only console with a Blu-Ray player, and with HDTV’s market getting larger than it was at the console launch, could make it a good deal for new HDTV adopters.  Plus, a ton of PS3 exclusive major releases are coming this November, as well as third-party cross-platform releases.

With the Playstation Vita handheld coming just around that time, this could very well be the start of the most exciting holiday in the history of gaming.