New Slimmer, Smaller PlayStation to Hit September 25

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bigdragon

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I don't see the point in this refresh. A price drop or the opening of a new studio building PS3 games would be more helpful I think. Of all the consoles hooked up to my TV the PS3 is the one used the least. Sony needs to fix that instead of tinkering with the design of an obsolete piece of hardware.
 

olaf

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[citation][nom]aftcomet[/nom]Bought a slim in April. Feel dumb now.[/citation]

that goes without saying :p paired with buying a console :D
 

bulldozer83

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unlike previous PS3's you can not change out the hard drive. it is built in with no access. so you buy one of these and you are stuck with whatever size hard drive you purchased. also the top slides from right to left to reveal the disc drive as it is no longer slot loading.

because of the size shrink I imagine all of the internals have been shrunk making it use less power and run cooler then any previous model.

the disc drive is slightly louder because only a small piece of sliding plastic keeps it from being out in the open instead of the slot loading drive in the previous PS3's that was buried a little deeper inside of the machine.

Joystiq is also reporting that after the run of Uncharted bundles which will be selling at $279 that a non bundled version will be available at $249. so before that version drops this new model is actually more expensive to get your hands on.

i believe that this is sony's attempt to try and stop sales of the Wii U.

The lack of price drops by Sony and Microsoft also lead me to believe the true next gen consoles are farther away then we believe. I don't think Sony is stupid enough to release another $600 console. typically when new consoles come out the previous consoles are usually down to $129 or $99 price points. the high prices of the current consoles either means we can expect very expensive next gen consoles or that we are still further away then people think from next gen consoles. unless of course when the new consoles are revealed they announce massive $150 price cuts, which i find unlikely.
 

MidnightDistort

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So i guess the 12GB version was just a rumor. I didn't think for a minute that Sony would be silly enough to incorporate such a small storage device into what most people already have loads of information on the current consoles. However since this one probably doesn't have ps2 backwards compatibility there's no real reason to get another PS3 unless the price drops to $99.
 

olaf

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yes vote me down :D but console are still dumb, with 99% of there games being dubbed down, and most of the time the PC version suffers as well...
 

afrobacon

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There will also a 12Gb version not sold in America which offers the capability to add your own hdd. This version I would be interested in as there are a couple games not available for PC that I've had my eye on.
 

bulldozer83

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[citation][nom]afrobacon[/nom]There will also a 12Gb version not sold in America which offers the capability to add your own hdd. This version I would be interested in as there are a couple games not available for PC that I've had my eye on.[/citation]

this version can add an officially branded Sony external hard drive. not an internal one.
 

gm0n3y

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I could see buying this if you either don't own a PS3 (and for some reason don't like computer gaming) or if it had an SSD. Even then, you could always just buy an SSD for your current PS3.
 

MidnightDistort

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The PS3 was at a ridiculous price. I wonder if Sony could have saved buyers a bit of money if they sold PS3's without a hard drive for those who have an extra one laying around that would work with the new system. I haven't bought the slim, i still have the FAT system & i am glad that if i wanted to i could upgrade the hard drive with that. It's a shame that the slimmer ones won't allow access to the hard drive.

I am hoping that Sony will be thinking cost effectiveness for the PS4 even though it's still not going to be cheap but considering the pricing of these consoles you may as well just build a PC with $600. I bought the PS3 for $300 something but its getting less use then the PS2 had which was on 7 hours a day. But i use my PC more often then any of my gaming consoles and if it wasn't for 'exclusive' console games i'd just game with my PCs. Heck, instead of buying an Xbox 360 for Dead Island, i got the PC version instead which saved me $200-300. I am hoping that more game developers start to see the benefits of going towards PC gaming.
 

MidnightDistort

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Console gaming was better back then as they were not as expensive as PC's were but now since they're selling consoles for ridiculous prices $600 for the launch of the PS3 you might as well spend that money building a PC which could give you better resolution for that price range (or a bit higher) and PC's won't restrict you to just gaming as you can do much more with a PC. It's more cost effective to PC game nowadays.
 
[citation][nom]bulldozer83[/nom]The lack of price drops by Sony and Microsoft also lead me to believe the true next gen consoles are farther away then we believe.[/citation]
I'm curious why you would think that. Everything from parts manufacturers, to job postings, to game studios are all pointing at a new console release towards the end of 2013. This new PS3 is surely less expensive to build than the previous version (finally getting good chip yealds, cheaper CD drive, ram price drops, less metal, etc.), so my bet is that after the bundle sales are over we will see a nice little price drop come in.
The main reason for no price drop is that there is no real competition. PS3 and X360 are both happy with pricing right now. WiiU is coming out, but it is still behind the current gen of console graphics in overall performance, so that isn't exactly a threat. The PC game market seems to be heating up, but it is not that much cheaper to upgrade a PC into a game rig (price for GPU, PSU, ram, and HDD to turn a 3 year old PC into a game rig would cost ~$250). Add to it that sales are not exactly hurting on any platform, so there is simply no real reason for them to drop prices.

Here is what I am expecting from next gen consoles (wiiU excluded of course):
Massive ram increase from current 256MB to 1GB or more to allow for massively larger maps, more complex environments, and much better textures. I think they severely underestimated the future price drops in system memory, and that game devs gave them a lot of hell over such a limited size. Being released in 2013 there is a chance for DDR4, but they may stick with DDR3 because it will be cheap.
A little CPU improvement. Probably a 2-3x improvement, which considering how old the current chips are, this is really not much. But to be honest, the bottleneck in the system is not on the CPU, so this should not be a huge deal
Relatively little GPU improvement. I think we will see capability for 4K video playback, but that the main focus will be on 1080p or 2K resolution at 30fps with the capability of running some AA and AF finally to polish things up a bit, and 3D support at 720p (for VR headsets, cause I think we will see a huge push for this very soon). To be honest it would not take much improvement over the current RSX to accomplish this, and I think most gamers would be happy with it (hell, even I would find it adequate and worth buying, which I cannot say about the current gen).
Drive space will be in the 500GB-1TB range on traditional platter drives. We may see an intro of some SSD drives, but with the push for more streaming content, and downloaded games (no CD/DVD/Blueray drive for games), I kinda dobut that SSDs will be large/cheap enough to include this go around... maybe on a refresh 1/2 through the cycle, or perhaps a small SSD cache drive to make things snappy.
Audio will stay largely the same, offering 5.1 audio, or possibly 7.1, but honestly (and perhaps sadly) I think we are done with major audio improvements on quality. I think the only real improvement will be support for more voices to have more audio sources within a game.

But I think that will be it. Last time around I was highly disappointed because consoles were designed for 720p and SD with no cleanup, when 1080p really took root (but really, who could blame them? the whole industry was pushing 720p for mainstream, and they had no idea that 1080p would become so cheap so quickly). If they can simply play a game at native resolution, with a minimal of frame loss (30fps), and just a little cleanup (especially AA), then it would really be 'good enough' until 4K gets popular. Thankfully I think 4K will not hit the main stream until 1/2 through this console cycle, so hopefully it will not be as much of an issue as it was with the last gen.

Either way, with games being developed for true 1080p, and better textures I think we will see massive improvements in the visual quality of games, and with more system memory we will get some huge levels, or at least some much more interesting level design than we have been seeing the last 10 years.
 

memadmax

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You can't polish a turd!
I too have a original PS3 with PS2 emulation. I have various things connected to it and looking at putting a SSD in it as well.
But you will not get another single dollar out of me till you bring back "OtherOS" which was one of the reasons why I bought the PS3...
 

bulldozer83

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[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]I'm curious why you would think that. Everything from parts manufacturers, to job postings, to game studios are all pointing at a new console release towards the end of 2013. This new PS3 is surely less expensive to build than the previous version (finally getting good chip yealds, cheaper CD drive, ram price drops, less metal, etc.), so my bet is that after the bundle sales are over we will see a nice little price drop come in.The main reason for no price drop is that there is no real competition. PS3 and X360 are both happy with pricing right now. WiiU is coming out, but it is still behind the current gen of console graphics in overall performance, so that isn't exactly a threat. The PC game market seems to be heating up, but it is not that much cheaper to upgrade a PC into a game rig (price for GPU, PSU, ram, and HDD to turn a 3 year old PC into a game rig would cost ~$250). Add to it that sales are not exactly hurting on any platform, so there is simply no real reason for them to drop prices.Here is what I am expecting from next gen consoles (wiiU excluded of course):Massive ram increase from current 256MB to 1GB or more to allow for massively larger maps, more complex environments, and much better textures. I think they severely underestimated the future price drops in system memory, and that game devs gave them a lot of hell over such a limited size. Being released in 2013 there is a chance for DDR4, but they may stick with DDR3 because it will be cheap.A little CPU improvement. Probably a 2-3x improvement, which considering how old the current chips are, this is really not much. But to be honest, the bottleneck in the system is not on the CPU, so this should not be a huge dealRelatively little GPU improvement. I think we will see capability for 4K video playback, but that the main focus will be on 1080p or 2K resolution at 30fps with the capability of running some AA and AF finally to polish things up a bit, and 3D support at 720p (for VR headsets, cause I think we will see a huge push for this very soon). To be honest it would not take much improvement over the current RSX to accomplish this, and I think most gamers would be happy with it (hell, even I would find it adequate and worth buying, which I cannot say about the current gen).Drive space will be in the 500GB-1TB range on traditional platter drives. We may see an intro of some SSD drives, but with the push for more streaming content, and downloaded games (no CD/DVD/Blueray drive for games), I kinda dobut that SSDs will be large/cheap enough to include this go around... maybe on a refresh 1/2 through the cycle, or perhaps a small SSD cache drive to make things snappy.Audio will stay largely the same, offering 5.1 audio, or possibly 7.1, but honestly (and perhaps sadly) I think we are done with major audio improvements on quality. I think the only real improvement will be support for more voices to have more audio sources within a game.But I think that will be it. Last time around I was highly disappointed because consoles were designed for 720p and SD with no cleanup, when 1080p really took root (but really, who could blame them? the whole industry was pushing 720p for mainstream, and they had no idea that 1080p would become so cheap so quickly). If they can simply play a game at native resolution, with a minimal of frame loss (30fps), and just a little cleanup (especially AA), then it would really be 'good enough' until 4K gets popular. Thankfully I think 4K will not hit the main stream until 1/2 through this console cycle, so hopefully it will not be as much of an issue as it was with the last gen.Either way, with games being developed for true 1080p, and better textures I think we will see massive improvements in the visual quality of games, and with more system memory we will get some huge levels, or at least some much more interesting level design than we have been seeing the last 10 years.[/citation]

i say that because in the past when the 360 came out the original xbox was $99. when the PS3 came out the PS2 was either $129 or $99. when the Wii came out the gamecube was $49.99.

the board of directors at Sony told the playstation guys that if they lose money on hardware again like that they will fire them.

so either we are going to see massive price drops on the 360 and PS3 (which should of started by now for sure) or the price of the next gen consoles is going to be crazy high. in which case most people want care anyways. the PS3 tanked at first because of its price, and to fix the issue they had massive price cuts to what should of been the launch price in the first place.

sony went from being dominant in the console world to last place. high prices means people won't be them. you know what type of PC I could put together myself for $600. Core i5 quad core gtx 660 8 or 16gb of ram. blu-ray drive etc and it will destroy the next gen consoles. FYI the next playstation console is being rumored to be powered by amd on the cpu and gpu front by an AMD APU.

to show the rise and fall of sony because of a $600 price failure here are the sales numbers over history from the psone to the PS3.

Worldwide sales figures

1. PlayStation – 102.49 million shipped (Japan: 21.59, US: 40.78, Europe: 40.12)
including PSone – 28.15 million shipped
2. Nintendo 64 – 32.93 million (Japan: 5.54 million, the Americas: 20.63 million, other: 6.75 million)
3. Sega Saturn – 9.5 million (Japan: 6 million, North America: 2 million, Europe: 1.5 million)
4. 3DO - 2 million

Worldwide sales figures

1. PlayStation 2 – 150 million as of 31 January 2011
2. Xbox – 24 million as of 10 May 2006
3. GameCube – 21.74 million as of 30 June 2012
4. Dreamcast - 10.6 million as of 6 July 2002

Worldwide sales figures

1. Wii – 96.56 million as of 30 June 2012
2. Xbox 360 – 67.2 million as of 31 March 2012
3. PlayStation 3 – 63.9 million as of 31 March 2012

sony is almost 90 million PS3's short of what the PS2 sold and are in last place. that is what a expensive priced console does. Not only that but we actually had a global economy that functioned to some extent when the last consoles launched, which isn't the case now.

So how do the current gen consoles coexist with the next gen ones with the current prices? either we have a massive price drop, the current consoles just completely go away ignoring sony's desire for their consoles to last a minimum of 10 years in the marketplace and come in at similar price points, or they are crazy expensive. not sure i enjoy any of those options except the first one, but at this point we have seen no indication of that and if the next gen consoles really launch as the rumor mill has said next year then we should of seen some price drops by now.
 

theroguex

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Anytime I see someone quote worldwide overall sales figures for the Xbox 360 I laugh. Several million of those are repurchases by customers who got the RROD before Microsoft extended the warranty. I know several people who bought a new one mere months before that happened, and were pissed because of it.
 

bulldozer83

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[citation][nom]theroguex[/nom]Anytime I see someone quote worldwide overall sales figures for the Xbox 360 I laugh. Several million of those are repurchases by customers who got the RROD before Microsoft extended the warranty. I know several people who bought a new one mere months before that happened, and were pissed because of it.[/citation]

well my 360 hasn't had any issues, but i have a slim. even so their is no denying that Sony sales wise has had a disappointment with the PS3. look at the margin between sony in first place with the psone and ps2 compared to their next closest competitor. it isn't close. to dominate like that and even be in the talk for last place is a major defeat. also because 360 does almost all of their sales in north america when they have issues it is much more well known. 360 sales next to nothing in Japan where sony usually dominates and gets a lot of their sales.

while not as well known PS3's also have a habit to Yellow light on people. it happens more then most realize. even in the ign unboxing video of the new slimmer PS3 one of the guys was like I just bought a slim PS3 a few weeks ago because my first PS3 Yellow lighted. it is a known issue.

hardware wise Nintendo rarely has issues though the had hinge issues with the ds light but outside of that i can't think of any widespread issues they have ever had. and if you do have to deal with their customer support it is the best i have dealt with.

sony had major issues with bad lasers one psone and PS2. i went through 3 psones that died from overheating of bad lasers and i have 4 PS2's in my room right now on my tech rack only 1 of which still reads discs all the time. sony was sued over it and a lot of people that bought PS2's the first few years could never play dual layered discs so if they wanted to play the new games had to buy a new one. and of course the first psp's with buttons that didn't work be it start, select, O, or triangle.

it works that way for everyone. people have issues. if they take care of them i am good with that.
 

bigdragon

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[citation][nom]theroguex[/nom]Anytime I see someone quote worldwide overall sales figures for the Xbox 360 I laugh. Several million of those are repurchases by customers who got the RROD before Microsoft extended the warranty. I know several people who bought a new one mere months before that happened, and were pissed because of it.[/citation]
You're ignoring the YLOD on the PS3 plus all the institutions that bought them specifically for the Cell CPUs with no intention to play games or movies in them, ever. It all balances out. If anything, I'd say the PS3 numbers are inflated by all the stories we read years ago about tens of thousands of the machines being linked together in clusters by every comp sci or research department with a budget to burn.
 
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