SandDollarEnterprise
Latest
Sony slips two new PS3 Slim models through the FCC
Our favorite pseudonym company out there, Sand Dollar Enterprise, is back with a pair of new filings with the FCC pointing to a refresh of the PlayStation 3 Slim hardware. We don't know specifically what has been overhauled inside, though the two new SKUs, CECH-2101A and CECH-2101B, mimic the coding scheme of the current hardware, which is CECH-2001A and B. The alphabetical differentiation relates to different hard drive sizes inside, with 120GB and 250GB options available today and likely to be replicated in the forthcoming consoles. Looking at the FCC's radio testing, we find the same 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR transceivers as are in the current Slim, leading us to believe the changes are elsewhere or, as PS3 News suggests, maybe Sony has just found new manufacturers for the same chips and had to run them through the validation committee again. It's just that the latter is far less exciting than the idea of Sony starting up an upgrades war with some tasty springtime spec bump.
Sony sneaks PS3 Slim through FCC under pseudonym, 250GB model discovered
Shenanigans were afoot in Sony's efforts to throw bloggers (such as yours truly) off the scent of the just-announced PS3 Slim in the FCC, and we've got to give them credit -- filing the thing as a "Computer Entertainment System" manufactured by "Sand Dollar Enterprise, Inc." managed to do the trick. Well played, Sony. Anyhow, it turns out that Sand Dollar's address is registered to Sony Computer Entertainment of America, which in turn leads us to the matter at hand: test documents for this sneaky bugger reveal a second model number, CECH-2001B, listed as a 250GB version of the console. For the math challenged, that's over two times the storage of the only SKU announced thus far, so if they can get this out for a reasonably modest bump in MSRP (we doubt it) and get it out quickly, it might be worth the wait. Why it's legal for a company to falsify its name with the feds like this is unclear, but we'll admit, we respect and admire the effort. In fact, we'd be even more likely to buy a Slim if it came from a company called Sand Dollar, we think. [Via PlayStation 3 News]
