Alleged PS3 Slim Details Leaked, Forecasted to Arrive This Fall

[Nairb]

It is real. As previously reported, according to Super_Secret the 'PS3 Slim' is a PS3 that's been cut down as much as physically possible without preventing the loss of playback of any existing PS3 title out there.

It still has Blu-ray, it still has wireless, it still has bluetooth and it still has gigabit ethernet. "OtherOS" support has been removed. You still get 2 USB ports. Hard drive sizes will be bigger, it will come in 120Gb and 250Gb flavors. It's still replaceable and will actually be slightly easier as it has been relocated to the front of the console. It will NOT have any "new" features, such as backwards compatibility or enhanced peripheral support. It's just a PS3, but slightly smaller and cheaper. The power supply is still internal, but a different power cable will be used. Rear ports are still the same: 1x HDMI, 1x Sony AV port, 1x Optical, 1x Ethernet. And of course a power port. Release date and official announcement are not final. Price is undetermined, but make no mistake, this is a "slimmed" PS3 in every sense of the word. It's as cheap as can possibly be, so expect it to launch with a smaller price tag than what you're paying now in your respective territories. Internally, several daughter boards have been removed, but all functionality is still there. This is due to a more advanced manufacturing process. It still uses a few extra boards, though, we're not quite at PSTwo levels yet. A cheaper Blu-ray drive is being used. It wont be any slower, but expect to see similar issues that another competitor had a while ago. Touch-sensitive buttons on the front for power/eject are gone in favor of cheaper push buttons. It has a slightly different startup screen. Only slightly. It's about 50% smaller than current PS3s. It wont be called the "PS3 Slim". The PS1 "slim" and the PS2 "slim" were never officially called the "slim", either. In short: It's a smaller PS3, but that's it. No new features, no special hardware, just smaller and cheaper. And it wont have sex with you. Cross-game chat is in the works as part of Firmware 3.0. It wont be out during the summer, but assuming all goes well, it will be out well before the holidays. Current timeframe places it around September, but it's still very much a WIP. If there are any major delays, that will slip and if there are very few delays at all, it might even arrive earlier, but don't bank on it as it is a lot more complicated than you might imagine. At this point, it's working quite well in the labs and supports several players at once. It's targeted to work with all past and future games that support ingame XMB, much like text chat. I'm not a betting man, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "slim" shipped with this firmware installed (that doesn't mean the slim will come first, remember). Who said the 3000 wasn't being phased out? It will be and sooner than you realize. However, the PSP Go isn't what's replacing it. The 4000 is. And yes, it will have a UMD drive. And similar to the PS3 "slim", it's nothing to actually get excited about. Keep a very close eye on the hard drives shipped with newer PS3's. In a few months (or possibly sooner), something strange is going to start happening. There you have it, folks. That's it, I'm done, I'm outta here. If you have any more questions, you'll just have to wait like everyone else. This account is gone, never to be logged into again. You might see me in a few months time when I've got something even more awesome to tell you, but it wont be from this account, and it probably wont even be on this site. Adios!

More PlayStation 3 News...

[PS3 News]

This part sounds interesting... I'm sure it will be to the PS3 Devs to examine also if it's true.

Originally Posted by Nairb Internally, several daughter boards have been removed, but all functionality is still there. Hard drive sizes will be bigger, it will come in 120Gb and 250Gb flavors. It's still replaceable and will actually be slightly easier as it has been relocated to the front of the console. Keep a very close eye on the hard drives shipped with newer PS3's. In a few months (or possibly sooner), something strange is going to start happening.

A lot of end-users will probably be happy to hear this too, assuming it's also true:

Cross-game chat is in the works as part of Firmware 3.0. It wont be out during the summer, but assuming all goes well, it will be out well before the holidays.

[Bakke]

Originally Posted by Nairb Keep a very close eye on the hard drives shipped with newer PS3's. In a few months (or possibly sooner), something strange is going to start happening.

Is he refering to the newest SKUs having part of the firmware on the HDD?

I wonder what could it be.

SSD! Yes!

That could be hah.

Last edited by Bakke; 06-24-2009 at 11:35 PM. Reason: Automerged Doublepost

[semitope]

no way ssd. What reason would there be for that added cost. I hope this new ps3 has less security as part of its slimming.

[gygabyte666]

As nice and tempting as it all sounds and being an owner of every version of Sony's past system-based lineup (original models of PSX, PS2, PS3 and PSP, including all slimmed down versions of them as well) I must say this is a little disappointing to hear about.

All of their other products in the past that were 'slimmed' down, were really upgraded in some way shape or form (PSone got a nicer GUI, better smoothing on games and a few other minor tweaks. The PS2 slim got better smoothing too, plus built-in ethernet jack, more reliable drives, etc. and the PSP-2000 and 3000 got double the onboard RAM, Video output, built in mic, etc.) The slim PS3 seems to be going in the opposite direction to save on costs.

I have no interest in it if they remove things that I have grown to like (OtherOS support). Sure the slim PS2 lost it's initial ability to have a HDD when it was made but by the time it was released people were really pumped for the PS3 so it didn't matter as much anyway. Besides, there really wasn't many games that supported it so it really wasn't needed, hell even now there are really no games using it.

They should at least add one or two simple new things to make it more appealing because to be honest I got all of the slim versions of previous systems because they had at least one key thing they gained, this doesn't seem to be the case with this one, so yeah it's really actually quite disappointing because I was really hopeful of getting a smaller model when they were released as I pretty much knew it would happen someday based on their previous track record but this really just makes it not worth it.

It also hurts more because the economy sucks really bad right now and the PS3 is the most expensive console on the market right now still and unless they dramatically drop the price with this one, it makes it even tougher to cough up the cash for it. The older models had the benefit of being MUCH cheaper and because the economy was far better, it was easier to be able to obtain them, it isn't the case anymore.

I guess for new people who have never owned a PS3 before, they wouldn't miss having OtherOS but for the rest of us who 'may' have thought of upgrading, it kind of ruins the additional amount of possible revenue they could have gained from current owners simply upgrading too.

If they keep cutting the price and removing stuff out of it to save money I find it extremely difficult to believe that this system will really last it's 10-year lifespan they claim it to have.

Poor move Sony, poor move indeed as far as i'm concerned.

[dodgydan2001]

SSD wont benefit the ps3 much more than putting one of the faster hdd's in, there's a bottleneck on the transfer bandwidth.

[Nairb]

I'm curious to know about what changes are coming to the PS3 hard drive. Faster speed perhaps? 10,000 RPM? that would be hot.

[sorceror]

I can't figure out what the cost savings could possibly be in not having OtherOS support. So far as I understand it, that doesn't use any special hardware at all - just the properties of the Cell itself, to run a 'hypervisor' that Linux or whatever runs under. How could you save any significant money by removing that?

I can only come up with a couple, not-terribly-likely scenarios. 1) Sony already uses Cells where one of the SPUs was mis-manufactured. (They always disable one of the eight SPUs, that way they can use even Cells with a slight defect affecting one of the SPUs. This is very common in electronics in general.) Maybe they will use Cells where there's a defect in the hardware virtualization for the Slim, improving yield very slightly.

2) Some of the hardware changes affect the hypervisor they wrote to allow OtherOS support. Rather than spend money and developer time updating the hypervisor, they just disable it for the Slim.

Either way, unless I'm missing something critical the savings are incredibly marginal...

[Nairb]

and since he said about the bigger hard drives, 120 GB and 250 GB flavors this may be indeed the slim we are looking at on the box in this photo!!

[cherryduck]

Certainly wouldn't mind the damn thing being smaller, the PS3 is great but it looks like a bread bin. OtherOS I can do without as I use my PC for all that stuff.