Bearing in mind that we are paying almost double the price of the Americans for a PS3 over here in Europe, I welcome the move to produce a cheaper model.

The price we are paying for this cut-down model is STILL more expensive than you guys are getting the full blown system for, but that's another argument for another day.

I have a PS2 already, so don't need the backwards compatibility (and they are as cheap as chips to buy if I didn't) and all of the other things they removed wouldn't inconvenience me either.

In my view, the major limiting factor to people buying the PS3 over here is simply the price. The Sony brand its-self has a very loyal following in Europe (goodness knows why sometimes) and there have been major rumblings of discontent by many gamers who were about to use the arrival of Halo3 as the excuse to jump over to the 'dark side'. Personally I wouldn't blame them either when you can get pretty much all of the multi-format games first on the 360 at the moment here in Europe.

Again, its just my personal opinion, but I think that this move (along with some quality games arriving before Xmas... fingers crossed on that one) will jump-start the growth of the PS3 in Europe, taking to that next stage in it's life-cycle where people other than hard-core gamers start to buy it in large numbers.

I also think that its a very clever marketing ploy... gamers can now weigh up if its worth another £100 for backwards compatibility and those with a PS2 already will probably go for the cheaper option.

To be honest, bearing in mind that (in my view) the PS3 wireless connection is rubbish for online gaming, and most of those ports on the front have never had anything plugged into them (I bought a USB keyboard and mouse, used them for a week, then they just started to gather dust.... I wish I had bought the cheaper version of the PS3 at launch.

phew... I am pleased to get all that off my chest.

Now what do you guys think ?