My first inclination was fake, but honestly I'm starting to think it's either real or (hopefully) a prototype. The reason I don't think it's a fake is because the attention to detail is just too good. Granted blurry pics don't help. But the more I dig into it the more things that felt off at first seem to be possibly correct.

For example the box art, in the upper right corner is the PS logo, where the P stands and the S is the shadow. In nearly all the boxes I've looked at the PS is colored, red P, yellow/green/blue S. Then I saw a recent Uncharted edition box which looks very similar in appearance to this one, including monochromatic PS in the upper right corner of the front of the box. (Granted the Uncharted edition one is black, this one grey.)

To me... Like others have mentioned the font is all screwed up. Gone is the Spiderman font, and also now all mentions to Playstation are smaller, having been replaced solely by the PS3. Clearly that is a large deviation but maybe it's part of a rebranding effort, who knows.


Other issues:

Bottom of case:
-> on the bottom of the new case there appears to be a screw hole but on 2nd glance looks like a defect from the mould. In any case the real Playstation 3 has a totally smooth underside and this is one reason I think if this is real it's not final product.
-> Still on the underside, the new PS3 has 9 holes for screws, etc, and also 1 indent for a rubber base, for a total of 10 'breaks' in the continuity of the smooth underside. The real Playstation 3 has 4. At first I thought this was a sign of cheap/knockoff stuff, but in watching a video of opening up a PS3, I think they're trying to ditch the practically 3 case current design. With the glossy plastic arc that gets removed from the top of the current PS3, then a sub-case that you also remove to actually get into the inside. The new design might be a 2 piece clamshell that removes a lot of that complexity/cost.

-> There is no branding logo on the underside of the PS3 or PS2 Slim. Obviously there are no warning/legal stickers or SN# stickers but that's not unexpected given that all we're seeing is the case.

Top of Case:
-> Again there is the rounded PS3 logo on the top, there is one on the top of the current PS3 but it's a decal sort of logo, not embossed into the case itself, like the new one is. (As you can clearly see from the flash reflection.) The PS2 and PS2 slim did have embossed logos, but much smaller. The PS2 slim embossed PS2 logo also includes a small 'Playstation 2' just beneath it.

Otherwise:
-> Corners, the corners of the vertical edges of this 'PS3' are rounded, the corners on a current PS3 are very angular. That said, with the theory that this is a redesign, the 'PS3' font on this box and embossed on the box are more rounded too, so maybe that isn't a coincidence.
-> 'PS' logo below DVD/BR slot is wrong, here it's a sticker, real ones it's a 3D piece of plastic that sticks out about 1mm. Also the real one is colored instead of just white, the real one has a red "P", then yellow to green/cyan to blue "S" shadow.
-> Again on the box print, the 'PS' logo is grey instead of multi-chromatic as described above.


In summary the biggest 'knockoff' argument I keep coming back to is that in all of the Playstation related branding I've been looking at this afternoon, any mentions of PS2 (slim) in legit content always included a subtext of "Playstation 2" just below the PS2 logo. I find it very doubtful that Sony would neglect to mention the Playstation brand since that is what they've really been building all these years. PS1/2/3s come and go. But it's always been a Playstation...

I agree that using someone's skull for your own 'rebel' attention whoring is tasteless. But then again I guess it's working, horray for the 'artist'.

It is somewhat heartening that the only real defender of this is Allislost with the cliche pentagram. I hope all that mascara and emo music is a phase...

Oh, and Zeus.:God = fail.

I used to 5 box 4 shadow priests and 1 warrior for PVE, that was fun but a lot of work. I think 4 or 5 mages would be a lot easier just using arcane explosion. I still dual box with 2 70 mages for arcane explosion farming and that works pretty well without a lot of head aches. I use wireless keyboards on the same channel to clone the commands, but I'll have to look into voice activation. That's an interesting idea.

I hope the specs are good, I've been waiting for them to release an upgrade to the 5d for a while now. I have a 20d which I like, but the crop is driving me nuts.

I ordered this as a collector (not ebay, or to play on) but will likely cancel now that Konami has revealed 'Limited' = 10,000 units. What. the. f-bomb.

Sounds like SkyNet, in a more literal sense. Although maybe like the movie too, with the "machine-to-machine intelligence layer".

Sony did it 3-4 years ago and I didn't buy one then for the same reason I won't buy a M.B.A. now. In order to make it fit in the form factor you just have to leave some stuff out, like... anything useful.

Sony looked better anyways. Sleek, black, glowing green 'core' that looked like some sci-fi thing. MBA looks like some oversize makeup compact.

Using the 106in (presumably 1080p) projection of a poster above gets you in the neighborhood of 21dpi on the screen. According to wikipedia, the average accuity of a human eye is 'better' than ~1/60 of a degree (1arcmin right in the center of the eye. Just for giggles at 10ft that's about .035in per side of a theoretical smallest perceivable pixel. That then is about 28.5dpi, give or take.

Using that 106in screen again, which is ~92.5x50in (using 1.85aspect ratio, should have used 1.77 apparently but too lazy to go back through everything) would get a resultion of ~2636x1425. Even assuming we underestimated the accuity of the eye and modified the dpi by a factor of 1.5 that get a 'usable' resolution of 3980x2150. Or just a bit more than double 1080p, give or take.

Personally I'd rather they work on brightness, contrast, and color reproduction. Really even upping the framerate on some formats would be nice, especially when viewing on huge screens. One problem I find with films shot in digital is that fast movements can be pretty choppy because the screen is large enough that I'm seeing things 'out of the corner of my eye' which is much more motion sensitive. Let's face it, 24fps was standardized at a time when movies were projected on a 10-15ft screen in a hall, not imax where you get a much broader field of view.

8GB for 120min of HD Video? Do they have some kind of definition of HD? DVD's for about 120min is 5GB or so and it's definitely not HD unless some marketing guy is -really- reaching and saying just being progressive scan is HD (480p). Recompressed 1080p movie in a torrent format is 10GB+ and that's recompressed. Raw video from a SD camcorder is 3-4GB per hour for my camcorder... no idea what it'd be for a 1080p camcorder but in any case 120min out of 8GB for HD video takes 'optimistic' to a new level.

The thickness (or lack thereof) is the new major selling point? *hurls marketing idiots off cliff* My 1.5 year old LCD tv is like 4in thick and you know what I'm -not- thinking all the time while I watch a movie? About how insultingly thick my tv is. Give me better color, brightness, and contrast, not compete on thickness. I know what part of my tv it is that I look at and it's not the freaking side.