Yesterday’s official confirmation of a $100 price cut for the 60GB model sent sales for PlayStation 3 sky high on Amazon.com, dethroning the previously most popular item at the Video Games category…Nintendo’s Wii.

Microsoft’s console also registered a surge in sales on Amazon soon after the Redmond behemoth announced its $1 billion mea culpa (the extension of the warranty period for its next-gen gaming rig to three years).

Sony’s price cut had similar effects yesterday, boosting PS3 pre-orders to levels unseen before for the 5KG monster, since its inception on the market. It appears that what everybody craved for determined a spike in sales of no less than 2800% for the 60GB models, simply dwarfing the Wii and Guitar Hero: Rock the ’80- the two most popular items in the Video Games category.

The $499 PS3 model comes with Wi-Fi capabilities, built-in card reader and the 60GB hard drive, while the 80 GB model, announced for August and which will cost $599, boasts with the same capabilities, but will lack hardware backwards compatibility.

All NTSC PS3s are currently being sold with the Emotion Engine, a chip that ensures full backwards compatibility of PS2 games in PS3. PAL PS3s however use software backwards compatibility, delivering a degraded compatibility (in March, Sony published a list of compatible games when it launched the PS3 in PAL areas).

SCEA's Kimberly Otzman went on record earlier today, stating "The current 60 GB model utilizes a hardware and solution for backwards compatibility, namely the Emotion Engine chip. The new 80 GB PS3 will use a software solution for backwards compatibility, similar to that currently found in the PAL model."