40GB PS3 to come and price drop on 60GB

According to Eurogamer.net, a new 40GB PS3 will come to Europe from October 10 with a retail price of £299. The “old” 60GB will get a new price, £349.

Here’s a quite from Eurogamer.net:

The repositioned prices will come into effect on 10th October, with the new 60GB “value pack” including two first-party games for the GBP 349 asking price, along with a single controller.

It takes the place of the current Sony GBP 425 bundle, which included the console, two first-party games and an extra Sixaxis controller.

At the lower price point is the new 40GB model which only features two USB ports rather than four, and loses the multi-memory card slot and backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 2 catalogue.

So the strange thing for me here is, they have removed the bacward compatibility from the new 40GB. Why? I can’t see any reason for them to do that since it’s done in software. Except from missing the memory card slot and two USB ports, the hardware should be the same. So why remove a software feature?