Sony Announces PS3 Slim, Price Cut, Improvements To Home 427
Sony's press conference today at the Gamescom convention was full of announcements. They officially revealed the PS3 Slim, which will be 36% lighter and 33% smaller than the normal PS3. It will come with a 120 GB hard drive and list for $299 when it hits retail stores in early September. Normal PS3s will drop to that price as well starting tomorrow. (Unfortunately for Sony, their unveiling was spoiled a bit by several retailers jumping the gun on new advertisements, not to mention the rumors that had been swirling for weeks ahead of time.) Sony also announced a PS3 firmware update as well as new features and customization options for Home. In addition to that, the PS3 and PSP will be getting a digital reader service. At launch it will bring access to Marvel comic books, and will expand from there. They didn't talk much about their upcoming motion control scheme, but promised more details next month at the Tokyo Game Show.
Sweet (Score:1, Insightful)
It would be really nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
..... If Sony restored backward compatibility with PS2 games. That and not the price nor the size of the console is why I haven't bought one yet.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Explain.
To me it says "we used slightly different controllers and peripherals, and don't feel like investing the time to port the drivers and such to a new linux kit".
I didn't see the bit where they said they were making it stop working on my existing device.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:preorder (Score:1, Insightful)
Too Little Too Late? (Score:0, Insightful)
This seems like a case of too little too late for Sony. With video game purchases already down significantly ( http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=4794 ) for 2009 and the price point for this new console at $300 it begs the question of why not do this 6 months or a year ago? I can't see this causing a large jump in sales when it is priced $100-$150 more than the 360 and Wii, respectively. It seems like Sony just can't quite get its act together with respect to selling the PS3 to the American/European consumer (although it does well in Japan). This Price should have been the price 2-3 years ago (when the 360 and Wii dropped theirs).
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll make it stop working on your existing device by simply removing the option to install when the update comes down the pipe. I doubt there's any real technical reason for dropping it, other than some beancounter deciding that the loss of respect from technical users was less costly than the upkeep for the hypervisor (assuming they remove it.)
Assuming they don't, you'll be able to keep what you have on there, but not reinstall or do a new install. Which is a huge amount of ass considering how much work was done by the open source community to port things to the PS3 including kernel patches and various GCC ports and additions for the SPUs. All of that is now wasted, even on older consoles unless you never, ever let them contact PSN.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would assume that the loss of Linux support is likely due to not bothering to accommodate for the large changes in hardware under the hood. If their research shows that not enough people are using a feature make it worth developing and supporting, why should they waste resources on that feature? Of course, by that logic, then Home should have dies a long time ago too...
At any rate, it shouldn't take too long for unofficial workarounds to show up.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, in my country... (Score:1, Insightful)
PS3 (40 GB version): $600
PS3 games: $100
Yeah, I'll skip.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:2, Insightful)
The install other OS option was utterly useless, only one cell was supported and you had no access to any of the advanced hardware. No reason for Sony to continue to support a feature that was used by only a very tiny fraction of PS3 owners.
People who pick this above all others as a reason not to buy a PS3 are just being petulant.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt it. I'd love to be able to play my PS2 games on the PS3, but I know it'll never happen. Not when they can "sell" the same games through the PS Store and get another $10-$20 out of people who have already bought the games.
Re:An even better model (Score:5, Insightful)
How about they release "PS3 Reliable edition"?
Of the two PS3 owners that I know (a friend and myself), both have had the Blue-ray drive fail. And mine failed just after I sold the console on Craigslist, making me look like a fraud.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'.
Re:Whoa! (Score:5, Insightful)
* 120 gig HDD.
* Built in wifi-fi.
* Streams all my media content from my computer.
* Top-notch BluRay player.
* Built in web browser
* Oh, and plays games.
I think it is a great value actually, But to each their own.
Re:Are we still expected to pay $0.30 for Home sho (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, people pay 20-30 bucks (and more) all the time to be walking real-life advertisements.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firmware 3.0 (Score:2, Insightful)
The What's New screen has always been there.
I'm not sure what you mean by this as I haven't read anything about it, but the Store is already exceedingly easy to access.
Themes have always been for sale as well although there are a decent number which are free. In my opinion, however, at least 95% of them are amateurish garbage. I'm not sure how the companies producing these themes were allowed to offer such crap.
I personally would never waste money on something like a theme. And there's a tool available that allows anyone to create their own theme, for free. I assume the tool will still be available for the slim PS3. And you can change the background image to anything you want any time you feel like it.
I assume you're referring to Home. This is nothing new. Sony even charges for clothing.
Frankly, I think it's ridiculous especially given there's not much of anything to do in Home. I also think anyone spending money on that stuff is a fool. But hey, that's their own decision.
Do that many people really want PS2 compatibility? It would be nice, but is it all that crucial?
I'd argue most consumers are clamoring for the latest games. And for anyone who owns a decent library of PS2 games I have to assume they already own a PS2 otherwise what's the point of all the games.
I don't see why either of these requests are important. It seems like an issue a miniscule segment of the user-base would be concerned about so why should Sony bother investing time and money into this?
Backing up to a USB drive is so trivial that I don't see much of a need for this. And there are games out there that, frustratingly, don't allow backups anyway.
It's not great, but it does the job reasonably well. There are things that probably should be addressed but honestly, how many people really care about this? It doesn't matter what they do, the experience is unlikely to ever compare to browsing on the PC for many reasons; the PS3 uses a non-standard browser and websites are designed with PCs in mind.
Again, this is a minor issue. What HDTV today isn't 720p or 1080p? The biggest issue I have here is that most games are don't run at 1080p, but addressing that is far from trivial.
Sony's responsibility is to satisfy as large a segment of consumers as possible. It would make no business sense whatsoever for them to try to address every last issue people raise. What you want isn't necessarily what most people want or even care about.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a standard "figure 8" connector typically associated with AC transmission. You see them on everything, but the place a Slashdot reader is most likely to have seen them is on the cord that goes between the AC wall outlet and a laptop's power supply. Dell uses them a lot.
I see nothing that would indicate an external power supply, and in fact the presence of that connector would imply the opposite.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
So keep an old CRT around. They're cheap, and you need one to play Duck Hunt anyway.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, LCD and plasma look like hell. That's the reason I haven't replaced my CRT. At least that's the case on every single one I've ever seen, no matter what feed it's using.
Blue-Ray feed with HDMI cables on a 240Hz LCD still has ghosting and jitter.
Plasma is like watching a slideshow.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not enough to justify getting games up to 18 months after their release date, or paying $120 for a new game when the US$ price is about $60 and the exchange rate is up at roughly 80c. At least TV and movie producers have wised up. There was an article here a few years back saying how much of global piracy happened just in Australia, just because we got TV series and movies so late.
Re:Firmware 3.0 (Score:1, Insightful)
"Do that many people really want PS2 compatibility? It would be nice, but is it all that crucial?
I'd argue most consumers are clamoring for the latest games. And for anyone who owns a decent library of PS2 games I have to assume they already own a PS2 otherwise what's the point of all the games."
Then you are being mere argumentative.
How difficult is it for you to understand that, for the customer, the ability to do something equates to value and hence incentive to buy the product?
If I'm plunking down hundreds for a console, I want backwards compatability. Doesn't freaking matter if I will use it or not, I may, I *might* want to. If I don't get it, and find out I've got to buy a separate console box, or maybe think I will have to, I'm far less inclined to buy the product.
A couple of the reasons why the Wii sells isn't because of the motion controllers--it's also because Nintendo announced they were porting old games and it was backwards compatible with the Gamecube. People *bought* classic controllers for this former, even arguing against 3rd party controllers that didn't have analog control.
Do most people buy a Wii to play old school games? No. But those who did might have said, "Hey, that's cool, I can buy some of the old NES games if I want." Extra value, more incentive to buy. Not a difficult argument to understand.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but there's a difference. With Other OS, people still want to hack out the GPU access restrictions (as has been done once or twice). With the facility removed entirely, people will attack the Native OS. Piracy shows up when you start messing with a console's native facilities, not a linux-specific mode that games can't run on anyway. I also learned this the hard way: software piracy on the Wii is possible (and popular) because we embraced the existing OS facilities and explored them, which then made it trivial for the warez kiddies to build launchers and whatnot. If we'd done something like BootMii to begin with (and ditched all of the existing proprietary code), they probably wouldn't have succeeded in creating piracy tools. (BootMii is a complete replacement of the Wii software starting at one of the early boot stages, including both the PowerPC code and the "security" ARM code).
Besides, I know a few hackers (including myself) who have chosen not to attack the PS3 because Sony actually made an effort to enable (some) open programming. People value the Other OS feature more than you'd think.
Sure, some people have been trying to hack the PS3 Native OS anyway already, but now you'll have a lot more people trying (those who wanted the Other OS feature as is, and those who were avoiding the PS3 due to Sony's attempt at being open).