Is a slimmer PS3 in the works?
This alleged spy shot of a PS3 Slim box may very well turn out to be a fake--or not.
(Credit: Kotaku)Back in 2004, after the PS2 was on the market for four years, Sony went ahead and shrank its design down and brought out a new model dubbed the "slim" PS2. It was a great move and Sony initially couldn't keep up with demand for the system.
Now, five years later, rumors have been percolating that Sony might be preparing to trim the PS3, with an outside chance that the company might have something to say about a new design at E3. While early reports we read seemed pretty dubious, a set of alleged spy photos of a PS3 Slim (with a new PS3 logo) surfaced on Chinese Message boards late Wednesday and seemed slightly more promising.
The original report stems from a PlayStation LifeStyle post declaring, "Redesigned PS3 to be revealed at E3." That's a rather bold headline, but the story deflates it rather quickly with a disclaimer that, "Of course, this is just yet another rumor..." However, the site claims to have "caught word" that Sony will not only take the wraps off the new PSP Go at E3, but unveil "another hardware redesign."
"We didn't get any specifics, but we speculate that it could be one of a couple different options," the post goes on to say. "First off, it very well could be as simple as a white or a silver PS3 to go with the white and silver DualShock 3s that have been made available." The writer also admits that the hardware in question might refer to Sony's rumored Wii-like motion-sensing controller, which may also be announced at E3.
T3's rendition of a slim PS3
(Credit: T3.com)I4U News picked up on the story and then Engadget took a whack at the rumors with a bit of its own speculation, suggesting that a trimmer PS3 would be in line with Sony's alleged move to a smaller Cell processor and RSX chip in August.
For the record, it should be pointed out that this whole slim PS3 rumor is actually rather ancient, with T3 and Engadget asking whether the PS3 was on the verge of a slim down over a year ago, in February 2008. In fact, the image to the right is from that original post.
Anyway, that's the anatomy of this latest rumor and you can choose to buy into it or not. On the one hand, Sony could use E3 to radically alter its gaming fortunes with a couple of bold new designs for its hardware systems. Or, it could just announce the new PSP and superficial changes to the PS3 that are designed to trim costs so Sony can finally break even on the system instead of losing money on each one.
All that said, at the end of the day, the most important thing Sony can do now is sell the PS3 for $299. If it can get there by slimming the thing down, and hopefully not stripping out any features, that's great. But I think people would be just as happy if Sony found a way to get to $299 with the current design.
Anybody buying this rumor? Will Sony come out with a totally new PS3? Would a slimmer version entice any XBox 360 owners to switch allegiances?
Note: As for Sony's response to the rumors, it says, "We currently don't have any plans for a redesigned PS3."
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter.
They could have slimmed down the design from day 1 by putting the power brick on the outside instead of the inside. Instead the opted to put it inside the console and as a result, it weighs a ton. Still love it for what's on the inside, though :) "
The 360 has the power supply on the outside and it still weighs more than the PS3.
Why in heavens name do you want an external PSU! My PS3 fits in my media cabinet just fine. None of my amps, DVD players or other devices have an unsightly external brick so I hope that the PS3 doesn't feel the need to go that way either!
I really can't see them wasting money shrinking the system if they can't get people to spend the money on the system they have now.
"and hopefully that "high frequency sound" makes your head explode."
They probably would like to but couldn't make that work either. RROD..E74 erro....errrr. Calm down dude i'm sure your xbox will be back from the repair shop with brand new ducktape to hold it together. Microsoft ducktape at that; yeah man the good stuff.
NOW, BEFORE YOU FANBOYS ATTACK ME, I HAVE BOTH CONSOLES, AND LIKE THEM BOTH, MY POST IS COMPLETELY UNBIAS, EVEN THOUGH I PERSONALLY FAVOR XBOX!!!!!
But each have there plus and minuses. Though I would pick up a PS3 if the price dropped. Hard to justify two gaming machine in the house.
As for the PS3 Slim, i highly doubt it. I could smell fake from a mile away. How hard could it be to print a computer generated image onto a cardboard box, take a pic on your phone and send it to a website?
You can buy a 360 for far cheaper and not miss out on many games since even final fantasy and traditionally PS only games are now multiplatform. Or the casual gamer will simply go with a Wii. Price point is what they should be focusing on. Because by the time they get the price point down and competetive other companies will be coming out with nextgen systems that make it looks silly and deserving of the lower price.
My son has the Slim PS2 and we bought it for $129 and they still make PS2 titles for it. The main factor we have for not going to the PS3 is the price of it. Get it around $200 or $159 or so and we might buy a PS3. $299 is still too much, and over that is a rip-off because it reaches the price of low-end PC systems that can outpower the PS3 in memory, hard drive space, and computing power.
the ps3 also has almost no memory - struggling even with linux. The pc naturaly can have its mepory expanded to 4gig for the price of a meal out
for games the ps3 will probably out perform any pc costing $399 but if you have an old pc around you could probably upgrade one for $299 that would play crisis on high - something the ps3 never will.
though there are many many other benefits to having a ps3 naturaly - just not the above.
Yes, he's wrong Firehazel is wrong to assume that faster clock speed means better... however, it is more powerful than a low-end PC. Significantly. The Cell processor is unmatched in processing performance. Heck, even the 360's processor is still dang impressive compared to PC processors you can buy. The reason consoles can be sold for less than $1000 and run things as well as $1500 computers, if not better, is because they sacrifice things like RAM and change the system's architecture around so that it doesn't work like a PC. It's meant to be a dedicated gaming console/DVD/Blu Ray player. I mean, you don't buy a DVD player expecting it to double up as a web browser (even though some do nowadays). You can't expect everything to approximate a computer's specs.
As is, the PS3 is still being bought and linked up with other PS3s to use the huge amounts of processing power it has. However, if PS3s/360s doubled up as computers, everyone would buy them, and just mod them to be used as computers, because they're so cheap.
So, take your pick. $300-400 console that's JUST a console, or $1000 console that can be a PC as well. Who would buy a console for $1000? Not I.
I was under the impression that the longer Sony makes the PS3, the better they get at making it. I took that to mean eliminating inefficiencies that add cost and adopting new techniques to reduce cost. In my mind that equals to manufacturing savings which they could pass on to the customer instead of paying for an unwanted aesthetic redesign.
It likely is about trying to do anything to sell PS3's before Sony losses another billion dollars. I doubt you actually believe that cutting off a few grams of plastic will lower the costs of the PS3. What kind of cuts are we talking about? Getting rid of blu-ray, a hard drive, or Wi fi.
The quickest way to reduce the price of the PS3 might be to remove the name Sony from the console.
Its probably already made at the same Lead Toy Factory as the makers of the Chin-station Tree.
Why would size make someone switch? It's what is offered (game wise) that would make someone switch.
true, then like a PS3 slim w/out PS2-299
PS3 Slim w/ PS2- 349
So far my PS3 is a Blu-ray player and then a PS2 game playing machine after that, I do not own ONE PS3 game as I've rented and beat the few I cared about (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted and Heavenly Sword) after trying Resistance 1 & 2 (terrible games IMO, nothing new or exciting) and Kill Zone 2 (still another FPS that I dont care about much) there is really nothing else on the system worth playing, there is nothing I look forward to getting this year really at all.....just waiting for those hopefully great RPGs that only the PS3 will have (yet the biggest being FF XIII is on all systems and I will get it for the 360), but that doesnt seem to be happening, if there is any game thats on all of them, I always get the 360 version, better achievement system, better online play, options and community (I'm sorry but the PS3 has free online argument doesnt work since it sucks compared to LIVE) and it doesnt require installing to run, taking an extra hour to install some of these games on the PS3 is stupid and a waste of my time
Give me more games Sony (and other developers) and I will gladly start supporting the system more, otherwise it DOES make a great Blu-ray player!
Devil May Cry 4 took about 40 minutes to install, not fully an hour, but I was exaggerating a little there, Devil May Cry 4 on the 360, plays as soon as I put the disc in......I love my Blu-ray player, but for games it seriously sucks bad since its so damn slow
more expensive to make than the competition
people aren't wanting to pay the premium so they have to sell it at a loss
its so expensive to make that even when making a loss they are still more expensive than the competition
so they cant sell enough to make the cash back though licence charges
I think sony accept that they will never make a profit on ps3 but cant drop it as the brand would be damaged to much.
so its a case of damage limitation now - hence no new price cuts...
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by UMCP
May 14, 2009 8:25 AM PDT
- Ps3 will not be 199.99 for another 3-4 years.
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by theoboley
May 14, 2009 8:44 AM PDT
- CItation Please. Unless you provide some solid evidence of this, this post is nothing more than a myth
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by 1eye1
May 14, 2009 9:45 AM PDT
- @theoboley
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by HMetal68
May 14, 2009 10:10 AM PDT
- The PS3 will not be $299 this year. All you have to do is squint your eyes until they are completely closed and be blind to think that a company reporting a billion in losses is going to reduce the price of something they are already losing money on. How would cutting the price help them? I was never great at math but taking a negative and making it more negative doesn't sound like a solid plan to change it to a possitive.
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by ironbyron_hd
May 14, 2009 1:26 PM PDT
- I purchased the 160 GB PS3 bundled with Uncharted for $433 with a 20% coupon from Dell. Signing up for and using a Sony Rewards Playstation CC, I was able to get an instant credit of $100 for the purchase from Dell. After using it as my primary CC, I was able to get two additional $100 dollar credits withiin the next 6 months. So I purchased the 160GB Drake's bundle for $133 after shopping around for a good deal.
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by HMetal68
May 14, 2009 2:01 PM PDT
- The PS3 will not win this generation of consoles until it is no longer the current generation. The XBox 360 continues to outsell the PS3 by almost double every month. The only way Sony can catch up is if they start outselling the competition by a wide margin for an extended time. So far that hasn't happened, yet the Sony fans continue to say that the PS3 will be the number one just as the PS2 was for the last generation.
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by theoboley
May 15, 2009 1:00 PM PDT
- @1eye1
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (96 Comments)With that being said, ps3 will be most likely see price drop down as low as 299.99 dollars this year.
The cited source is "Sony reports $1 billion annual loss" by Lance Whitney, CNet. It doesn't actually say that the PS3 will be reduced to $299.99, but if you squint your eyes and read between the lines, its obviously in there.
Seems to me that the 10 year strategy is finally starting to make sense. 10 years to finally make money on the PS3. That is if anyone cares about the PS3 in another 6 or 7 years after Nintendo and MS release their new consoles in 2 or 3 years.
I also wonder how much longer Sony will offer the free on line gaming. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see an announcement that Sony will start charging. Then again, Sony's on line isn't worth paying for.
Unfortunately, that deal is dead. You can still get some form of a good deal with a Sony Rewards CC though.
PS3 will take this gen, just like PS2 did the last gen. Not at first, but eventually.
I'm not saying one is better than the other. I own both (actually if you include the Wii I have all three). The PS3 is a good system and so is the XBox. But whether the PS fanboys want to admit it or not, the 360 continues to sell more systems each month. As long as this trend continues, the PS3 will never be able to catch up. Period.
Unless I see a specific headline that comes from Sony itself stating "PS3 down to 299.99" I consider anything else mindless drivel.