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.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:2, Interesting)
The internal design architecture of the new PS3 system, from the main semiconductors and power supply unit to the cooling mechanism, has been completely redesigned, achieving a much slimmer and lighter body. Compared to the very first PS3 model with 60GB HDD, the internal volume as well as its thickness and weight are trimmed down to approximately two-thirds. Furthermore, power consumption is also cut to two-thirds, helping to reduce fan noise.
So: Still has internal PSU (my major worry), but isn't as great a size reducation as say the shrink from the PS2 to the PS2 Slim. Sounds like more chips are 45nm than before. Obviously there was a circuit board redesign. One major fail is not having a USB port on the back for PlayTV.
Even quieter fan noise will be a nice feature for movie watchers, not that it is a major issue now.
And the price is very competitive with the 360. Price drop here coming soon I presume! Otherwise there's even less reason to get a 360 compared to the PS3, especially if you don't have wired ethernet near your media setup.
The new firmware looks like it has some nice features, for people who get excited by such things.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
It only seems strange that the PS2 is still selling so well, until you realize that the PS3 really isn't "standard def. TV friendly".... I know quite a few people who play games on their PS2, and bought replacements when their old unit broke/wore out, but have no real interest in a PS3, simply because they're still using a large-ish tube type standard-def TV as their main television set. (If you have cable or satellite, you really have no need to replace it, after all.)
My experience with using a PS3 in standard def resolution was eye-strain inducing, trying to read many of the text fonts the games would display.
There's a pretty big ratio of PS3 owners who coupled the purchase with a new plasma or LCD TV .... partially because they wanted a Blu-Ray player for that fancy new set, but realistically, it's practically a requirement to enjoy many of the game titles too.
Re:The 'old' PS3 is $299, too (Score:2, Interesting)
Firmware 3.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
New Features:
Things People Actually Want:
Thanks a bunch, Sony.
Sony Electronic Reader (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to be able to do more than read Comic Books with a reader program. I want to be able to read PDF, ODF, RTF, HTML, CHM, and other formats that eBooks come in.
If I buy a PSP or Slim PS3, I want an educational value for it as well as a gaming one. I want more than a Language Tutor program or BrainAge, I want to be able to read eBooks as well.
I am sticking to a PS2 because the PS3 price is too high and they took away backwards compatibility with PS2 games on most PS3 models. I might as well buy a Wii because it runs GameCube games, or an XBox 360 with a hard drive that can run XBox games. Sony really needs to learn a lesson here to run legacy software like the others, or risk losing these console wars.
No more Rootkits either, ok? Sony we are sick of them.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:1, Interesting)
could mean that they dropped the hypervisor
Re:An even better model (Score:5, Interesting)
The failure rates were published on joystiq a couple of days ago: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/08/17/game-informer-xbox-360-at-54-2-percent-failure-rate/ [joystiq.com].
xbox: 54.2%
ps3 10.3%
wii 6.8%
Too bad Greenpeace didn't consider those when they named Nintendo such a non-green company.
Re:Firmware 3.0 (Score:1, Interesting)
The new firmware is designed to help Sony advertise, and does almost nothing that PS3 owners actually want.
Thanks a bunch, Sony.
Virtually all of the recent PSP firmware 'upgrades' have followed this model as well. No functionality gains, just more sales and marketing...
I was really pulling for Sony to not bone this one.
They had backwards compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony is retarded for removing backwards compatibility. It's the only one of the 3 consoles where the developer got the bright idea to remove features.
I bought a PS3 last year since I wanted to play Metal Gear, but I also wanted to get rid of my PS2 (DDR is still played on occasion).
You can still find them on Craiglist/etc. Be sure to look for the 60 GB one as it's the only one that has it in hardware.
(But it's not as good as Nintendo's. You have to buy a memory card converter to actually get save games on it and buy another peripheral if you want to use you Guitar Hero instruments on it (is there another way to play the GH1 track?). But the play itself is solid/perfect as far as I can tell.)
Re:Are we still expected to pay $0.30 for Home sho (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. What I think they should do is offer those items as accomplishments for in game goals, and have a place to shoe them off. Use the peple desire to collect and show off stuff to sell games.
Shocking, I know.
Re:Needs an Infrared Port (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a satisfied customer.
Re:It would be really nice... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hell yeah! I got a 36 inch Sony tube HDTV with 1080i res, HDMI, all the candy! SDTV *and* HDTV look great. The first thing people normally say when they get an HDTV is "SDTV looks horrible." Not so with my TV! However, it does weigh 220 lbs. (100 Kg) so it's not going to be fun to move.
Re:No Linux Support? (Score:4, Interesting)
My prediction:
- The PS3 slim will be hacked. Now that there is no Other OS support, there is the same incentive as there has been for running homebrew on every other console.
- Said hacks will be used for warez, probably by people other than those who developed the hacks.
Linux hackers tend to be much more successful at system reverse engineering and exploitation than the kids who want warez. This is why Other OS is a Good Thing for Sony: it removes the incentive to bypass their security for a lot of people. By removing this option, they're setting themselves to have their security broken. And we all know how long it takes for "other" people to use these hacks for less than legal purposes (I learned this the hard way).
I firmly believe Other OS is one of the main reasons why there is no PS3 software piracy so far. Check out this table [marcansoft.com] from our 25C3 presentation.