Sony had earlier announced plans to drop the price of the 60GB model of the PS3 to $499 in the US, and release an 80GB model with a copy of Motorstorm (from what I hear is crap) at the $599 price. There was a huge buzz about the price drop, with people saying that this is the quickest price drop of a console ever (false, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox one month after release in Europe).

Then, after the buzz, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe dropped another bombshell – this price drop has a “while stocks last” condition.

But wait, there’s more. SCE America later reported that those claims were false, and that the two configurations were going to sit side-by-side one shelves:

Those quotes from David Reeves are not accurate. He said that if they had lowered the price in Europe, that territory would have run out of their current inventory by the end of July… As announced this week, SCEA’s product offering in North America consists of a 80GB PS3 available in August at US$599 and a 60GB PS3 available now for US$499. We have will have ample supplies of both models to meet the needs of our consumers for the foreseeable future.

After having a stellar E3 press conference (after last years headache of one liners), this is certainly not what Sony needed.

New Zealand, Australia and Europe customers won’t see this price drop however. SCEE will be releasing a bundle version, with an extra SIXAXIS and two games – Resistance: Fall of Man (want) and Motorstorm (don’t want), for the same price. Why don’t they just give us the price drop too to spur growth as has already happened in the US?

In fact, why can’t we get a new price more closely aligned with our (better) US exchange rate, even if our console price is tethered to the UK’s price? When the PS3 price was confirmed, our dollar to the US was wavering at $1NZD = ~$0.45USD. These days it is $1NZD = $0.78USD. Current PS3 price is at $1200. Using the power of Google Calculator, the $599 price would make it closer to $770 here, and the new $499 price would make it ~$630 here. While it doesn’t include shipping over here or anything, it still makes us wonder why we are getting the raw end of the stick. We are getting charged double that with conversion – it’d be cheaper for us to buy from the US! Stupid SCEE.