Whoa, Nelly! No sooner than we hear that Sony is informing Japanese retailers that the 80GB PS3 model
won't be shipping any longer after August 8th, along comes this to stoke the raging rumor fires once more. In a one-two punch that just
can't be coincidental, Sony has also hacked $50 off of its
160GB PlayStation 3 bundle from Amazon. But really, it's the report from
RTLinfo that has us most excited. According to it, the Sony elite are informing European retailers of an impending €100 price slashing on the 80GB console, which will dovetail nicely into the sudden and not-at-all unexpected debut of the
PS3 Slim at the gamescom expo in Cologne, Germany. Reportedly, the willowy unit -- which shouldn't differ much in terms of specifications and features -- will be properly introduced to the world during Sony's pre-event press conference on August 18th. Obviously we've no way to confirm or deny just yet, but given
everything else that has
transpired over the
past few months, we'd say an official reveal is definitely due. What say you, rumormongers?
Read - Sony PS3 Slim to be revealed at gamescom [Thanks, Dominic]
Read - 160GB PS3 price cut [Via
GamesIndustry]
posted August 4th 2009 6:10AM
Pricecut pls. Heating up the competition is always good! :D
Agreed. competitive price or fail.
i thought it's competitive enough! Seriously, with a blu-ray player integrated it's a really nice price!
actually, a modchip would heat up competition.
upvoted for optimistic comment :P
modchips plzz :p
Optimistic pizza plz.
@ dexter
actually, the ps3 is selling pretty well at its current price point. Its only 6million consoles behing the 360 but then again, The 360 came out earlier and you have to account for repeat buyers. so all-in-all, the ps3 isn't in too bad of a position.
@fred
Yeah I bought another 360 Elite when my original Premium went in for RRoD for 3 months. Repeat buyers are very common.
So Sony was flat-out lying when they said no slim PS3?nice.
Cause if they say that the rumor is actually true, people will hold their purchase and wait for the upcoming slim version instead.
It's a marketing strategy being done by most companies out there. (Apple, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Microsoft, etc..)
No, they could have said we don't comment on upcoming products (that's what apple does). Instead they said quite clearly and literally "no slim ps3". That's an outrght lie to their customers.
Lying?? Ummm most times than not they simply say "We Dont comment on Rumors and Speculation"
Find it hard to believe they would say "There is no slim PS3" why?? because anyone with half a brain knows that there will be at some point because thats what Sony does...
All lying corporations are evil.
the remaining corporations are just as much evil.
They quite clearly and literally said "at this time we have no plans to release..." If they hadn't approved the slim for mass production at the time, then their statement was true.
What I remember was that, when the rumor (with "spy-shots") first came out, the majority of people said it was fake with ridiculous and speculative reasons such as Sony would never "change the font of the PS3 logo" (even though there was NO existing PS3 logo). You yourself did not believe in the existence and in the eventual release of the PS3 Slim back then. So why hold it against Sony for not confirming something when you were perfecting content with the belief of the non-existence of the said thing?
"What say you, rumormongers?"
*fab fab fab*
"What say you, rumormongers?"
the anticipation is killing ME!!!!
I'm currently dancing a jig
I'm guessing Sony moving the power supply to external. The current PS3 has been stripped down already (only 2 USB port, no memory card readers). What else would they strip? Ethernet port? Wifi (make an external wifi dongle)? Make it use 1.8" hard-drive?
They have moved to a 45nm architecture because of which less power is required and less heat is generated. So they use a much smaller heat-sink and make it slimmer
The only things left that I can think they can strip are Wi-Fi and the ability to user-upgrade the 2.5" drive (that door system costs more than just bolting the drive in). I don't expect the former, and I rather do expect the latter. I don't see a drive door on the slim plastics, do you?
Oh please, no 1.8" hard drive. If I couldn't carry over my 320GB (2.5") hard drive from my PS3 phat, I'd never consider getting the PS3 Slim.
I still want to know more details before I jump onto the bandwagon.
I think Sony could afford a huge price cut if the PS3 really does go slim.
The innards in the current PS3 are pretty huge they must have shrunk the process down again from 65nm to 45nm to get it into a box that much smaller.
It's pretty staggering how aggressively they have shrunk the circuitry in the PS3 since launch. They went from 90nm to 65nm pretty fast and they are sitting pretty at 45nm soon which is around half the size of 90nm with much reduced cost, heat production and power draw.
At least from a technical perspective this generation of consoles is pretty amazing.
I am not sure about the "could afford a huge price drop" part. They have been selling the PS3 at a loss for most of this generation with the added disadvantage of not selling as many games. As a business a 'huge' price drop makes no sense but a price drop is required with a slim system to gain momentum in the run up to Christmas.
If they get it right it could be what the PS3 needs - they also need to get the motion controller out early next year before natal.
45nm doesn't make the actual innards any smaller directly. It just refers to the silicon chip on the CPU. Look at current desktop CPU's compared to older ones. Pretty much the same size, but the silicon has been shrunk ALOT. Heck, look at GPU's. The silicon is now going to 40nm, yet the units themselves are getting bigger.
However, with less heat generated, they can use a smaller heatsink/fan, which is what takes up the majority of the bulk of the PS3.
@Poke: Sony themselves have recently stated that the cost of manufacturing the PS3 has gone down by 70%. They can quite easily afford a big price cut.
70% drop in manufacturing doesnt mean much when some people were saying it was costing as much as $1000 to make a PS3 at launch....they need to recoup all the money they can before a price drop that will put them in the hole again....I personally think that with the economy the way it is Sony dropping the price globally this fall may do more harm than good, especially with the Yen getting Stronger and the US Dollar weaker....hell thats PRETTY much what has fucked them over as is.
@Andrew you are not taking into consideration the amount that Sony have likely lost on the PS3 in total. If they could afford a massive price drop I think they would because at the end of the day its the games that make the money not the hardware (not in Nintendo's case) and if you sell more consoles then you sell more games.
I wonder how much of a hit MS are taking selling the xbox360 at cheaper than wii prices for higher end hardware. They have taken a different strategy to Sony as I guess with more standardised components the xbox360 is cheaper to produce.
@poke You act like shrinking from 65nm to 45nm is a small deal. Your talking about shrinking transistors by around 50%. The most expensive thing in the PS3 is most likely the GPU and then the CPU. If you could lower the price of those parts by 50% you could probably knock off 50 dollars off the PS3 right there.
Now when you consider you can reduce the amount of the heat sinks and fans which make up the majority of the bulk of the PS3 your talking about a smaller unit. Less heat means you can use materials that are not as expensive for insulation(Plastic instead of Metal coatings etc) and you are talking about a smaller powerdraw too.
I'm just curious whether or not the CPU and GPU will end up on the same die. With a SoC design they could potentially reduce production costs by 70 to 80%. This from a production price perspective is a very very big deal the potential for a very significant price drop is definetely there. There is a rumor the price of the PS3 in Europe is dropping by 100 euros. When you think about that in perspective thats nearly 30% of the price being wiped out in the next few weeks. Now thats a pretty hefty price cut.
@Danneh
The actual innards do get much smaller because the transistors shrink in size. If you go from 90nm to 45nm your shrinking the transistors to around half the size which means you can pack in twice as many in the same space or just as many in half the space.
And you're missing the point in respect to CPU's and GPU's.
CPU's have had a die shrink but they've also increased in transistor count.
The top 65nm CPU used to be the QX6850 with 582 million transistors. After that Intel shrunk their processors to 45nm so its basically a 50% shrink. Now that means you can pack in 873 million transistors in the same space but the top of the line Nehalem EX processor packs in a whopping 2.3 billion transistors!
It's the same with GPU's. The top of the line Geforce 8 series was built on a 90nm process and packed in 681 million transistors. When the GT200 series came out the process was shrunk from 90nm to 65nm so it was made 50% smaller so you could pack in a little over 1 billion transistors in the same area. Problem is when the top of the line GTX295 came out instead of packing in 1 billion transistors and being the same size as the 8800 Ultra die it packed in nearly 3 billion transistors so it grew quite a lot.
@Chris
Consoles are usually produced at a loss and the money is made back on game sales. After a certain point with software when you break even every game you sell is practically pure profit which is why software is such a smart business model in the longer term.
Danneh:
45nm does make the chips smaller. Newer CPUs on PCs don't get smaller because they keep adding transistors to them and adding balls (pins) to them to have wider and more busses. The Core i7 has triple channel 128-bit wide memory busses, for example. Also, on PCs, the CPU has to be replaceable and discrete, so they can't make it smaller due to constraints of the LGA package.
In a device like this, they can use a microBGA package in order to make it smaller. Also, they can put multiple things on the same package (like the EE+GS in the PS2+, PS2 slim and 60GB PS3s). When you put two things on the same package, you can eliminate a lot of balls, because if the two had 250 balls each, but 100 of them on each package were to communicate with each other, then the merged device only has 300 balls (the 100 balls on each package are replaced by internal wires).
So yeah, smaller feature size often makes chips smaller, the CPUs you are used to are a special case that you just see as the general case because it's the one you are familiar with.
In this case, taking two existing designs and just building them on a smaller feature size, instead of adding functionality by adding more transistors, the chips will get noticeably smaller, and if they can be merged into one package, it will be a lot smaller. It might even appear to be the same size as only one of the chips was before, although if you measured it you'd notice it was slightly thicker.
There is an error in the Post. The trade show is called gamescom and not gamescon.
http://www.gamescom.de/
It's Gamescom, not Gamescon
I have to see it to believe it. Until then, this is still just a rumor. To me, the PS3 slim is like the Macbook Wheel - Wishful thinking.
Backwards Compatibility Anyone? (PS3 Slim Upgrade?) It was promise Sony made when PS3 was first debuting. This is the chance for them to make right on that promise! They're making price cuts because they can now afford to manufacture the PS3, which is one of the reasons they took the backwards compatability out; because of cost. I would rather take HALF of the proposed price cut, to enable backwards compatibility!
I have own a 160gb that I bought for $499 why would I spend my money to play ps2 games. I have backwards capabilities and have never played my old ps2 fav's, download them their 5 bucks if you must.
the Only PS2 games I have played on my PS3 are God of War 1 & 2, Persona 4, and MGS Essentials Collection.....all of which was MONTHS ago....
That's funny, because all I play on my PS3 is PS2 games.
@ Poo_and_Wee
Whats the point of doing that!!
I just hope the slim enters the market at the 80gigabytes more appealing pricetag, cause having to pay more so they can clear old stock will only piss me off and make me hold off on my purchase.
If rumors hold true, then the current PS3 only costs Sony $255 to make. 70% of the original ~$850. Sony releasing a $249.99 PS3 would help tremendously. Not that I expect that to be the price though. It will more or less be $299.99. Anything higher won't help.
I also expect Nintendo to drop their price to $180-$200 before Christmas. Microsoft will probably knock another $50 off the Pro and/or Arcade versions of their console.
All purely speculation of course.
The Yen has gone up and the dollar down since that estimate, plus you have to factor in the retailer's cut...
Kotaku is also reporting that Sony has "placed significant orders for key Sony PS3 components"
http://kotaku.com/5329527/sony-ramping-up-ps3-production-forsomething
Surely, these all cannot be coincidences.
PS3 is good enough to play.
What was better than now ?
"Sony has also hacked $50 off of its 160GB PlayStation 3 bundle from Amazon"
That's more 'chipped' than 'hacked' I'd say.
Seriously!?! i literally bought my 80gb about 3 weeks ago. damnit. well, i guess i could give it away as a christmas gift huh??
bring on the slim!
Yeah you could, i'd be a very happy person if you sent it my way:)
Uncle Mike, I need one lol
Ohh, so THIS is what's going to save the PS3.... right?
what do you mean, 'save'?
afaik they are selling enough units and games to stay happily for anotehr decade or two in teh market.
I also don't understand the "saved" part. If you look at the numbers they have actually sold better on average than the 360 has worldwide.
360 = 31m units in 44 months for an average of 704,000 units per month in release
PS3 = 23m units in 32 months for an average of 718,000 units per month of release
And that is with the 360 experiencing a year of uncontested sales including a holiday season with no competition from another current gen system. PS3 released at the same time as the Wii and has had a three way race all the time. So even with all the price cuts and its lower price everyone trumpets, and with huge games like gears and halo 3, the 360 has still no been able to match the sales of the PS3 that everyone claims is such a flop.
If they release this slim model with a price drop, especially with the upcoming game releases that are coming, sales will only go up. If it contains the new backwards compatibility, they should drop the PS2 which is obviously cannibalizing sales at this point.