Following yesterday,s announcement by Sony president Ken Kutaragi about a PS3 price drop for Japan, Sony is proclaiming that the lower priced version will now have an HDMI port to enable high definition signals to be sent from the console to HDTV capable sets.
This is yet another reversal by Sony in their strategy to market the PS3. Previously, the low-end version of Sony,s next gen console left out the important port. Many consumers berated Sony for this decision, and felt that without the hi-def output, the lower-priced PS3 would be a futile purchase.
In addition, following the news that Nintendo,s Wii will not be a region-free machine after all, Sony,s Phil Harrison stated that the PS3 will have total region free status for video games. However, the region free aspect of the Blu-ray player will not translate over to movies played on the device.
This week’s surprise announcements signal an aggressive campaign from Sony to make the PS3 more attractive to the consumer following this summer’s storm of bad press. With only two months to go before launch, Sony may have more surprises in store for gamers as crunch time approaches closer.
