After nearly a full year on the market in Japan, the PlayStation 3 will be seeing its first price-cut in the land of the rising sun. Sony has announced that as of October 17th, 20GB PlayStation 3's will begin retailing for 44,980 yen (a 10% cut), and the 60GB will sell for 54,980. While Sony states that the price will go into effect on the 17th, stores may begin honoring the prices as soon as tomorrow.
In addition to that, comes the cheapest of all PlayStation 3s, the 40GB model that will retail for 39,980 yen (about $342, when converted) and will arrive in two colors on November 11th – Ceramic White and Black. The reason why the 40GB is cheaper than the 20GB and 60GB is largely because of the console's configuration to not include PlayStation 2 backwards compatibility. That said, Sony has also announced that 200,000 new PlayStation 3 owners will have a Blu-Ray copy of SpiderMan 3 to go along with their new console.
And, as we already reported, there's also the new DualShock 3, which will also appear in two colors on November 11th, for 5500 Yen. And now all that's left is for North American gamers to get treated to the same love, and all will be right in this world. Though, I wonder if Sony has something even larger up their sleeves set up for us. We can only hope.