Sony will be quietly switching Japan over to the CECH-4300C which is the latest revision of the PlayStation 3 Super Slim that will hit Japan this week. Sony is planning to obviously phase out other versions of the console as the CECH-4300C will be the version sold moving forward.

While it is not yet clear what optimizations Sony has made to the CECH-4300C model, we do know that it will come standard with a 500GB hard drive and apparently going forward this will be the only model going forward so the 250GB hard drive models will be no more going forward.

For the release of the CECH-4300C in Japan, a price cut came with the release which was about 3,000 yen less than the previous price tag. It could be that Sony plans to make a PS3 push this holiday season and intends to use the savings gained in the CECH-4300C to help it move more of the previous consoles this holiday season.

So far however, Sony has expressed no desire to drop the price of the PS3 in North America or Europe, but with them dropping the price in Japan and moving to a new console, they could be looking at this as a possibility this holiday season for sure.

Microsoft has not yet announced what its strategy will be for the Xbox 360 this holiday season. Previously however, it has always released a Holiday bundle deal and we suspect that again this year they will do this. To this point they have not released larger than a 320GB hard drive for the Xbox 360, so it would be a big surprise if they opt to release a 500GB drive for the Xbox 360 this late in the console’s life cycle. We suspect that this year focus on a bundle at a good price. Just don’t look for a 500GB hard drive to be part of it.