It has been announced (or, Sony sent me an email saying) that the new Playstation 3 console will be heading to our shores with a price of, wait for it – $799.

The console is the same but instead of 60GB of disk space you only get 40GB, it also doesn’t have flash card readers (who uses those anyway?) but the biggest drawback of the system is it doesn’t have any backwards compatibility – at all.

It’s like getting a free kick in the balls with every purchase. What the hell is the problem with having software-based backwards compatibility? Is it because Sony feels it has to keep updating the PS2/PSone games catalogue? Why not just dump PSone compatibility? When was the last time I even played a PSone game? Ummm, when I had a PS2 with no games. And frankly Sony, you can’t say the PS3 has lots of fantastic games yet, and I’ll be wanting PS2 backwards compatibility with my PS3 with no games.

As a bonus, this will be the only one that is sold in SCEE territories. The current 60GB models will be all sold and they’ll be gone, much like what happened with the PS3 60GB model in America, except the price cut isn’t being hailed as a price cut forever. In fact, SCENZ hasn’t even announced what the price cut is going to be, so I wonder if it will happen.

This comes hot on the heels of Christmas season, which The Warehouse has already thankfully reminded us (Santa costumes anyone?). It isn’t like people will probably even care if there is no PS2 backwards compatibility, well, Mr Joe Smith buying it for his angsty teenage son.

Look out for the new Playstation 3 in stores October 12th.