Keep Backward Compatibility on 40GB PS3!

As many of my fellow Playstation fans are aware of, Sony plans on nixing backwards compatibility on the 40GB version of the Playstation 3. While this won't effect me as I currently own one of the launch day machines, I feel for future owners of a machine that lacks backward compatibility for no reason what so ever. As some of you are aware, the 20GB and 60GB PS3's contained a chip called the Emotion Engine that assisted in emulating the PS2. Sony decided to remove the chip when they released the 80GB PS3 and instead relied on software backward compatibility for emulation. In my eyes this is fine and a tangible reason to limit backward compatibility, with the promise of better compatibility with future firmware/software updates, much like Microsoft did successfully with the Xbox360. What upsets me with the 40GB model is that Sony does not have a valid reason for removing backwards compatibility from the new machine. Preliminary information states that the 40GB model is identical to the 80GB model except for the lack of 2 USB 2.0 ports,smaller hard drive, and the lack of a memory card reader. As the layman can see, there is absolutely no logical reason to remove backward compatibility for what is essentially the exact same product. This also bodes poorly for 80GB owners as from the sound of a recent press release, Sony has no interest in continuing Backward Compatibility support through software. Some may say, "Just Keep your PS2 connected", that philosophy proves very counter productive. In 5 years when Sony decides to stop selling PS2's us gamers will have no hardware to play our classic PS2 games on. To this day many people (myself included) still play PS1 games on our PS2's and (first release) PS3's. In the end, this poor planing on Sony's behalf solidifies the belief that Sony has lost touch with their customers, and really has no defense when their customers leave for competition that not only have arguable better software, but also refuses to steal features away from their potential customers. We hope that Sony sees how nonsensical it is to remove software based backwards compatibility and not only offer it on the 40GB unit, but also continue updating the backwards compatibility in future updates.