60/80gb Ps3

[Shinebi]

At the same time Sony decided to cut back on production costs for EU and trim to 40 G, they released the 120 G version in Japan... don't know if they have BC though.

[C']

Wow... I find it a bit odd that they'd make this decision considering that the PS2 was backwards compatible till the end. PS1 games are being sold till this day.

The new PS3 consoles are still compatible with PS1 games as Sony got this to work with pure software emulation (I think this was also the case with later PS2 models).

PS2 backwards compatibility required the presence of physical PS2 hardware in the PS3 console. In the original (NTSC) models this was both the Emotion Engine and the Graphics Synthesiser. The later PAL 60GB and NTSC 80GB models had software emulation of the Emotion Engine but still required the Graphics Synthesiser chip.

Sony decided to remove all PS2 compatibility related hardware from the 40GB model in an effort to cut production costs.

[Blade Runner]

So has the 80GB PS3s been discontinued as well?

[Number45]

They were the last SKU (If you discount the silly one that removes the BC) introduced over in the US, I'd imagine that's the main one now, so they shouldn't be.