[jqp]

I have been looking forward to adding a PS3 to my home theater at some time in the future. It is slick, has some cool technology, is theoretically backwards compatible with many great games (I wouldn't know from experience) and of course it is a Blu_Ray player to boot. But the price, the lack of compelling PS3 games, and a vague distrust of Sony has caused me to put it out of my mind for the forseeable future.

Now Sony is coming out with a 40GB PS3 model for $399. Still more than I want to pay for a reduced price PS3. But here is the kicker. This model is not backwards compatible !!! Which was a huge feature of the PS3!

So is Sony serious about this model as a gaming console? It has limited games and its main benefit seems to be that it a new   lower-price Blu-ray player.

[Rob Babcock]

That's disappointing!  Why ditch backward compatibility?   I like the P3- don't have one yet but have played with some friends.  The 360 is also very cool (I played HALO3 w/my brother- awesome! ).  Both have some really cool utility as media players, too, with one caveat:  the 360 at least won't stream wav.files, just MP3 or WMA.  That really sucks.