Sony unveils super slim PlayStation 3

We've seen the evolution of the first PlayStation 3 to the PS3 slim, but today Sony announced a super slim PS3.
by Christopher MacManus
September 18, 2012 10:56 PM PDT

Sony unveiled a smaller, lighter PlayStation 3 at the Tokyo Game Show on Friday, a redesign of its aging console that sports a thinner look and larger hard drive capacities.

Two flavors of the redesigned PS3 arrive this fall in the U.S.: a $269 250GB super slim PS3 option lands on September 25 that includes Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (game of the year edition) and downloadable content for Dust 514; a $299 500GB slimmer PS3 version sneaks in on October 30 and comes bundled with Assassin's Creed III.

According to the PlayStation blog, the new PS3 design sits 20 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the existing model. Officially, the super slim PS3 weighs 1.1 pounds less than its predecessor and loses several inches in depth and height. Think of it as a lovechild between the previous two hardware iterations. The aesthetics appear rather low-key, with minor gloss near the edges and a ridged top panel. For the first time, the new PS3 does not use a slot-loading disc drive but instead a sliding door panel to top load discs. Another key change includes the overall power consumption, which drops from 200W to 190W.

In other territories, gamers can buy the aforementioned packages on September 28, with an additional option for a super slim PS3 that contains a 12GB flash hard drive (and room to expand via an official mounting bracket). No word if that SSD-equipped model arrives in the States, which seems unlikely as it went unmentioned by PlayStation's U.S. arm. We also spotted a white super slim PS3 coming to Japan in late November with no word of release outside of Sony's motherland.

The emergence of a slimmer PS3 verifies a leak from the Brazilian FCC that emerged in July, which also accurately stated the hard drive capacities that arrived today.