sony sticks it in and breaks it off

Found this on 1up.com this am:

Hoping to reinvigorate interest in its PSX multipurpose entertainment console, Sony Computer Entertainment today announced two new models of the PlayStation 2/digital video recorder combo. The new versions, due to hit Japan in early December, mix in a new "x-DJ" music and video mixing feature borrowed from the SCE PS2 game DJBox.

The new models, categorized DESR-5500 and DESR-7500, will otherwise be up to the same spec as their predecessors on the market, including all the interface upgrades Sony has added through firmware updates since the release of the original PSX models last December. The 5500 will have 160 gigabytes of hard drive space for storing recorded video and later burning it to DVD, while the 7500 will have 250 gigabytes.

Surprisingly, Sony will not suggest a retail price for the new PSX models -- instead, they'll be "open price," subject to the judgment of retailers. The first two PSX models carried suggested retail prices of approximately $900 for a model with a 250-gigabyte hard drive and approximately $700 for a 160-gigabyte model. However, recent reports claim that Japanese retailers have been marking down those models to as little as 50% of their suggested price tags.

That's the latest bit of down news for the PSX, which debuted to strong response from early adopters in Japan last December, but failed to sustain interest thereafter. Sony will likely not be able to meet its target of one million units sold by the end of this year, and it quietly shifted plans to release the device in Europe and North America this year to some time in 2005.

I'm a little confused as to why it's necessary to put a 250 gig HD in a ps2. you can count the number of ps2 games that require a HD on one hand. And all those games come with a HD in the package. I mean, WTF? If Sony wants to keep up in the console wars, then do something other than sell us an overpriced Pentium pro with a lot of disk space. And it's not as if they are doing badly in sales. I don't know about sales of the base unit itself, but the sheer amount of games made for the console will keep the board of directors in a comfortable lifestyle for quite a few years. My ps2 collects more dust than it does playtime, mostly because the graphics don't compete with those of the xbox, but the ps2 still has the best sports games and survival horror games which is the reason I still own one. And do you know anyone who will pay nine hundred F'ing dollars for a new ps2 when they can buy one for a buck forty nine right now? C'mon guys, pull your heads outta your butts. The new world is here and it's full of cheap, reliable hardware, not nine hundred dollar harddrives.

NOTE: Ok, i guess i should have read the article a little better, cause it's not just a ps2, it's a psx, which i guess is their full blown entertainment center, like a ps2 with a tivo built in for good measure. this still doesn't justify the pricetag if i can get the ps2 for $149 and a tivo for less (plus or minus the monthly fee depending on my desire to pay for it). And coincidentally, wasn't the ps1 renamed the psx after the ps2 came out? or the slimmed down version of it...