Sony - no formal price drop coming to older PS3 slim models at this time

Sony has no intention of dropping the price of older PS3 models at present, even with the "super slim" models hitting store shelves next week.

Speaking with Engadget, SCEA VP of marketing John Koller said the reason for prices staying the same on the slim model is due to consumer demand.

"When you look at some of the earlier chassis, and the really early adopters -- the 20GB, and the 60GB -- that consumer had a choice," said Koller. "They could either go out and buy another hard drive -- and it's an easy install, so we make it easy for the consumer if they want to take a hard drive off the shelf and plug it in, they can do that. They had a choice of doing that, or purchasing another PlayStation 3. And what's been happening is we're seeing a lot of adoption of second consoles in-house.

"The smaller Flash drive isn't coming to North America, and a lot of that reason is the digital consumer. We really want to make sure, out of the box, that there is an option for them to be able to download that content. That is really critical for us, very very important.

"There's no price drop formally, but the thing that's been happening in the market over the last year or so is that there's been so many retail price promotions, and so many different gift card offers and all those things, being done by all of us (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony), that we've heard from our consumer: 'Enough with all these weird price moves. What we really want is content and games and value."

So, no price drop on slim models with the super-duper slim coming next week. Sorry, Charlie.

Thanks, Joystiq.