Sony poo-poos £299 PS3 claims

Sony has played down claims that it's about to announce a cut-price PS3 for the UK.

Of late, the net's been alive with rumours that a USB-less PS3 would be offered to UK consumers in time for Christmas. The price? £299, rather less than the £425 the existing 60GB model retails for.

But in addition to the loss of USB ports - odd, since that's how the wireless controllers are recharged - it was also claimed the cheaper PS3 would not include support for old PS2 and PSOne games. Again, that's a surprise, since backwards compatibility is provided through software.

Refusing to bundle the code wouldn't save Sony any money at all, and while dropping the USB ports would cut a tiny amount off the production price of the PS3, arguably the need to have two production runs rather than one would actually increase costs.

Whatever, Sony's Computer Entertainment Europe subsidiary today poured scorn on the claims, telling website GamesIndustry.biz the rumours and speculation were nothing more than "rumour and speculation".

That's not a denial, and SCEE has made similar comments about rumours that, in the past, have proved correct.