A bit of news following Microsoft's recent announcement of an "Elite" Xbox 360 which may or may not hint at a third model PS3 in the works.

A filing with the Federal Communications Commission in the US dated March 2, 2007 shows an application for a third model in the PlayStation 3 line, dubbed CECHE01 in model coding. The changes in store for this version? Some changes to the bluetooth components (although it says this will not change the functionality) and an 80 GB hard drive.

Sony was not long in responding to the reports of this possible new model. In speaking with Next Generation on the matter, "As mentioned when we made the product announcement for PS3, the system will have different configurations (thus, 60GB HDD with memory card slots and Wi-Fi and 20GB HDD without memory card slots or Wi-Fi both exist)."

"Application to the FCC has been made with various possibilities in mind, however, it does not lead to a new product announcement at this time."

Translation? This supposed 80 GB model is only a concept which may never see the light of day. Probably for the best- enough confusion out there now for some with the 2 configurations to choose from in some places.

do you think you could buy the hard drive alone?

Dancer, you can use any 2.5" SATA notebook computer hard drive in it now, available at computer stores. Sony even gave instructions on removing/ replacing the hard drive in the safety information that came with the system.

thanks for the information