where are all the PS3 consoles???

Everyone must be replacing brook 360s.

I think the 40GB's have been allowed to sell out since they are going to be replaced in a few weeks by the new 80GB sku and the MGS4 bundles were scarce to begin with so its not surprising...

My parents are looking for a Blu Ray player (my dad doesn't stop watching Planet Earth when he checks out my set-up) so I might checkout this new 80GB for them.

yep i get the feeling Sony blew it this summer. the biggest title comes out since launch and they do what. let the 40gig dry up and the mgs4 bundle has been in limited supply since launch, and now deleting both for a new gimped 80giger.

looks to me like there is still demand for the 80gig mgs4 bundle at 499 even when the new 399 model comes out. Sony ,keep both models till lbp launch then replace the mgs4 pack in with lbp.

The MSG4 bundle isn't that limited. There's at least three major retailer chains that have it available right now.

please check your facts

best buy sold out
gamestop sold out
walmart sold out

the point being that sony under estimated the ps3 demand this summer in NA.

Plenty available on Canada right now. I just saw a display palette full of 40gb at Best Buy, and there were some 80gb MGS4 bundles as well.

Check my facts?!?! Circuit City has them in stock. Toys R Us has them in stock. Amazon is accepting orders again with a shipping date of August 25th. Sears.com and some B&Ms. Some Meijers B&Ms have them. They have been available for a while now.

I would guess that Sony is planning to sell through as much of the 40 GB PS3 inventory as possible so that it would start to sell out around the time that the new 80 GB PS3 was released. That makes sense as long as the 40 GB PS3 doesn't sell out completely and that doesn't look likely since several major online stores still have it in stock.

Check your facts. Sony picked the wrong time (again) to refresh the skus (again). There were plenty of units around until they stopped manufacture of the 40gb unit to make a new 80gb unit with all the same shortcomings. They have not shipped the new unit, but we are expecting them within the week. While I guess it is cool they doubled the harddrive in the lesser expensive unit, a lot of people will still miss having backwards compatibility from the PS3. Having an 80gb unit that will not play PS2 games is just going to fragment and confuse even more of it's user base, since that was until recently the easy way to tell which did and which didn't.

walmart by my office has 6 MGS bundles on the shelf...
target by my office and home has 2 each...
best buy near my home has 2 on display...

not to mention 40gb.

Now they're just simplifying matters by having no BC sku. Pretty simple, really. Most people looking to buy a PS3 right now aren't interested in BC (yes, there are exceptions), so they won't notice a thing. All anyone notices is that it plays blu-rays and that it has an 80gig HDD. Other than that, joe-schmoe doesn't know (or care) about anything else.

Tretton claims Sony has no intention of returning to BC, probably because the PS2 won't stop selling. That thing's a monster. Once sales finally dry up on the PS2 console, new games will continue selling well for a while to come. Once new games stop selling for the PS2, then Sony might reconsider its no-BC approach.

I'm going to guess and say that we won't see any BC firmware update for at least another two years.

As far as the supply chain goes, now's the perfect time to let supplies run low. No major new releases (first or third party) and it's not a traditionally major spending month for games. Momentum doesn't really start building until the fall.

I've got 1!

I went into Best Buy when the MGS headset was released, and they had a big ol' stack of them...sorry, I know, not recent!!!!

But boy, am I glad on snagged a MGS4 PS3...the Gunmetal color is awesome!!!

Just went to BB here in Honolulu on the weekend many MGS4 bundles.

My local BB had 6 of the 40g and ZERO of the 80g MGS. I went back on Friday and suddenly they had 8 of the MGS and ZERO on the 40g.

I returned my 40g for the 80g since I want to play some of my old ps1 & ps2 games.

If the rumor is correct that Sony isn't going to let the new 80g versions play them and loose the SACD player then I made a wise decision to snag one of the true UNIVERSAL PS3's.

My co-worker couldn't find one at Best Buy, or Circuit City, but he found one at Wal-Mart where they had 30 of the MGS bundle.

you mean mostly universal

The universal ones are the 20&60G models