Sony President and CEO Kaz Hirai wants 40 GB PS3 users to know that they still own a "very powerful machine," and said that those who need a bigger hard drive can just swap theirs out.
Speaking to MCV, Hirai said the PS3 continues to evolve over time, and that as PlayStation Network content expands, Sony wanted to offer more storage capacity without raising prices.
"We brought in the 80GB because we wanted to make sure we continued offering the value proposition to consumers in the true fashion of PlayStation," Hirai told MCV.
"We heard a lot of response from the consumers basically saying 40GB is nice, but with a lot of additional download products were offering via the PlayStation Network, consumers were looking for a higher capacity hard drive."
"We thought it was a great time to introduce it at E3, but also make sure that we continued to keep the pricing the same."