This may not sound like much after Microsoft's confirmation of the new Xbox 360 Elite model with a 120 GB hard drive yesterday, but it looks like Sony also had a similar initiative recently. And they could soon reveal a third PlayStation 3 model, with extended storage capacity - albeit not as extended as we would have expected. Even though Ken Kutaragi used to be in favor of equipping a new PS3 model with a massive 250GB HDD, we now have reason to believe that Sony will settle for a pointlessly small 80GB hard drive instead. That's not even a lousy linear progression (20-60-100 GB), let alone an exponential one!

This news emerged late last night, after Kotaku reported about a request filed by Sony with the US Federal Communications Commission on March 2, for a "class II permissive change" (whatever that is) to their PlayStation 3 console. The modification involves a different implementation of the Bluetooth module, with a "reverse F antenna" (id.), and most importantly, a different hard drive. Should this become a new PS3 SKU, the current models (CECHA01 with 60GB, and CECHB01 with 20GB), would be joined by a third one (CECHE01), with an 80GB HDD.

Oddly enough, Sony's filing doesn't mention any other major changes - no 65nm Cell chip, for instance. So right now it's hard to believe that they will introduce a new PS3 model with nothing but a slightly larger HDD, when it's so easy to manually replace the 20GB / 60GB one with whatever your heart desires (and your pocket affords).

Today, Kotaku also got a response from Sony to their initial story, but they neither deny nor confirm the new PS3 model. Why are we not surprised?

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)