SlashGear

Well everyone wanted a budget system and they finally got it. The 40GB PS3 will be dropping on October 10th in Europe for a price of 399 Euros which is $595 US.

That seems like a lot here, but all of the PS3 models have considerable price hikes in Europe, if this system were to come to the US it would probably be the $399 system everyone has been talking about. Want to know what the catch is? Only 2 USB ports instead of four, that’s the only difference other than the HDD size. No not really, but you have to read on for the really good stuff.

Just a little flashback to when they were making the good PS3’s

No backwards compatibility. Umm I don’t know what bad news could trump that. But if you already have a PS2 that still works pretty good, and you don’t mind keeping it around, this could be the model for you. It is technically a hundred Euros cheaper and all it lost was the backwards compatibility, some storage space, and a couple USB ports which aren’t bad for $100 Euros.

You still get Blu-Ray, WiFi, and the nifty wireless SIXAXIS controllers as well as the ability to play PS3 games and its marked down to the price of an Xbox 360 Core system (I think they are the same price in Europe). So Sony has effectively gone from great hardware based backwards compatibility to mediocre software based backwards compatibility to no backwards compatibility at all, perfect.

40GB PS3 official for Europe – no backwards compatibility, at all [via joystiq]