It wasn't too long ago when a Microsoft executive was trash-talking Sony. Nay, going so far as to make a bet against their rival gaming manufacturer. Case in point: J. Allard made predicted that Sony's PSP would downright flop. He was wrong, and to honor a bet with Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, he donned dreads and updated his Microsoft company profile page, admitting "N'Gai had it right," and that the PSP was not a failure.
Looks like Microsoft is up to the same antics again. This time, Xbox director of technical strategy and attack blogger Andre "Ozymandias" Vrignaud, is the one to take a bet with N'Gai. He states that "My prediction is that you're going to see the creation of a new, low-end SKU this holiday. It'll likely remove integrated WiFi, memory card reader, and most controversially, all backward compatibility. (Remember, there's still some back-compat hardware in even the new "software only" back compat SKUs; removing the remaining CPU is a significant cost savings.) You'll see a new WiFi dongle made available. And finally, this low-end SKU will likely come with a smaller 40 GB hard drive. The low-end price will be set at $399, with the higher-end 80 GB SKU dropping to $499."
Is internal WiFi really that expensive to add into the machine?
Maybe Sony will just stick to one-sku just to piss M$ off. haha
I would buy a $399 version in a heartbeat, I have a wired connection, And sold all my PS2 games when the 360 launched. I don't really have a use for the memory card reader either. So this would be a great version for me. I would buy it, but I don't see this happening as backwards compatibility seems to be a big deal for a lot of Sony fans. I just personally never play last gen games on a new system. They are old and look crappy most of the time, so I just buy the new games.
Edit - I forgot about the HDD, but of course it is upgradeable unlike the 360 so who the hell cares. My pet monkey could swap a HDD.
BTW $399 and 40 gig is perfect IMO
And I would be the 1st to buy such a SKU. I don't care about Wifi, BC and card reader.