Sony has taken the wraps off its new ‘slim’ PlayStation 3 at the Toyko Games Show. The new version of the console will debut in North America on September 25 before hitting Japan, Europe and the rest of the world from October in a phased, product-by-product rollout.
The much-rumored device is around 20 percent smaller in size and 25 percent lighter than its predecessor. The ‘baby’ PS3 will be available in white or black, with two storage options — 250GB and 500GB — to choose from.
Notably, Europe (and other PAL territories like Hong Kong) will be graced with a 12GB flash memory equipped version; that will allow those that have manually swapped their PS3 HDDs for SSDs to gain significantly improved game performance. But that’s probably solely appealing to real enthusiasts.
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The Verge summarizes the somewhat confusing international launch dates and prices:
In North America the 250GB console will be available September 25th and be priced at $269. The 500GB version will be available on October 30th for $299. In PAL territories there will be a PlayStation 3 with 12GB of flash memory available on October 12th for 229 Euros. The 500GB console will be available for the same price on September 28th. In Japan the 250GB will sell for 24,900 Yen and the 500GB will sell for 29,800 Yen, both available October 4th.
Interestingly, there’s no mention of 160GB and 320GB versions, which have been available with previous PS3 devices.
More details are on the PlayStation blog. Though the post covers things from a US perspective, it does include more general product details and specs.
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