July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp., the world's biggest game-console maker, will stop making the $499 PlayStation 3 model for the U.S. market to focus on a player with more storage.

Sony plans to sell the 60-gigabyte version in the U.S. until supplies run out, Tokyo-based spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka said, declining to give specifics of inventories. The model will continue to be available in Europe and Japan, he said.

``There is no plan to stop sales of the model at the moment,'' Fukuoka said, confirming an earlier report by Reuters.

Sony last week announced a price cut for the 60-gigabyte model in the U.S. by $100, or 17 percent, responding to the widening lead of Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360. The Tokyo-based company will sell a $599 80-gigabyte version for the U.S. market in August.

The phasing out of the $499 model means that consumers in the U.S. will still find the PlayStation 3 to be more expensive than the $479 Xbox 360 Elite model, which has a 120-gigabyte hard disk, and the $249 Wii, which has no hard drive. The gap may widen as Microsoft last week said it plans to cut the price of its console.

Nintendo has sold 2.84 million Wii units in the U.S. since the console went on sale in November, twice the 1.38 million Sony's PlayStation 3s sold, according to NPD Group Inc. Microsoft has sold 5.5 million Xbox 360s in the country since the console reached stores in November 2005, Port Washington, New York-based NPD said.

Last Updated: July 16, 2007 23:25 EDT