There was a $50 price drop earlier this year, it's now $250.
Last year we picked up a new slim at
Best Buy that included the Blu Ray movie Bolt, and the games Little Big Planet and Modnation racers. I believe there were a couple of other stores offering similar bundles (2 games, 1 movie), but preferred that set more than the others. This was a bundle box by Sony, marketed for each store. Stores will also run their own "bundles". For about $50 more, you can get an extra controller and other accessories, that usually total $60-75 individually.
There is also the Move bundle. It works with the eye toy, and controls the way the Wiimote does. It's cool, and there's a few games out there made for the move, but it's not a necessity. We got it when it first came out, but haven't used it much since. Some of the first person shooters allow you to use the Move controller.
Then there's the Playstation Plus membership, which runs $60 a year. This membership allows for discounts on Download Content and downloadable games off the PSN. There's also give aways each month for games, some of these games are designed for the PSP but can be played on the PS3. If you download any free games, you much have an active Plus membership to play the games. Any games you buy with the Plus discount are always yours. It could be anywhere from a few dollars off to half off.
A lot of games are moving into digital format. So don't be surprised if he's asking for a new game off the store. They also release a lot of old games in the store for about $7. The new slim models are not backwards compatible with PS2 games, but can play PS1 games. The original Fats are backwards compatible, but are prone to overheating and killing the power supply. Not a good idea looking for them.
You might also want to get a bigger hard drive. I believe they come with a 160gb drive, but ours has filled in a year. Plus it's a royal pain to transfer everything to a new hard drive. You can't transfer download content, so you have to re-download it all (once you own it, it's yours though). And not all saves can be transferred. Each hard drive is serial coded to the PS3 it's formatted to, so it can't be transferred easily. A good investment is to get at least a 500gb hard drive (standard SATA drive) and replace the hard drive before turning on the PS3. Even games that come on discs will install to the harddrive, some are little as 50kb up to 4gb big.
Some recently free games we got with PSplus -
Plants vs Zombies
A set of Genesis games
PS1 games - Spyro 1,2, and 3
- Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3
Mini Games - I Must Run
- Karimogi
- Let's Golf
- Flying Hamster
- Duel Invaders
- Scary Girl
Some of the games that were a pain in the rear to transfer -
Rockband - and the download songs don't transfer either
Demon Souls
One thing that Plus does give you, is access to the Cloud Save. It allows you to access your save files from any PS3. It does take a little more effort to save it twice, but it helps if you need to transfer game saves.
