The head of Sony Computer Entertainment, Kaz Hirai, has set out to reassure European users that the 80Gb PS3 at the same price at the old 40Gb PS3 is still a good deal - even if you've only just bought the smaller model.

The larger-HDD model, it was announced at the recent E3 conference, is to hit the UK's shores 'from' August 27th.

Now, if you're even slightly aware of the costs of things like hard disk drives, the new SKU won't surprise you. If you're not, HDD prices - and the cost of storage generally - are constantly dropping. Also, try getting our hands on an 8 or 10Gb hard drive. It's possible, but not probable because manufacturers tool up for demand and no one wants piffling little drives any more.

So, the PS3's massive new 80Gb HDD can be read simply as a supply chain reality: it's less expensive for Sony to source 80Gb drives than 40Gb drives in the big picture.

The 80Gb unit, after all, does not come with more backward compatibility, ports, controllers or... lights.

This hasn't stopped Kaz from feeling as if he has to placate consumers... well, it hasn't stopped him from telling UK industry journal, MCV, that: "40GB is obviously less than 80GB, but it’s still a high number and a very powerful machine."

Gotcha... he also says, "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." Erm... 'value proposition' is always a good thing to say - much like "going forward" and "out of the box".

He then has to say, ""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."

Frankly, we don't see why Kaz doesn't just point people to the PlayStation's own US blog which, since December 28th 2007, has been running something called: 'PlayStation Tips #5 - DIY Hard Drive upgrade'. This starts with... "No matter which model of the PLAYSTATION 3 you’ve got - 20GB, 40GB, 60GB, or 80GB - music, video, and gaming download fiends will find a way to fill up their hard disk drive. Fortunately, the PS3 doesn’t require some hard-to-find proprietary HDD - you can swap it out yourself with the kind of drive found at most electronics retailers and on the internet."

Oh... maybe because video game consumers all live in the Living Room now and don't want to look inside their PS3?