Slim PS3

Even before the Slim PS3 was officially announced, there were plenty of rumours surrounding how Microsoft would react. Now that we have all the details of the Slim PS3 pricing and features we can better estimate how much the Xbox 360 will cut its price by.

With Xbox 360 now the most expensive console on the market along with lack the fact that it lack features such as Blu-Ray playback and built-in Wi-Fi, Microsoft will almost certainly respond by dropping its price. It is expected that the price will be dropped to match the Slim PS3.

Dropping the Xbox 360’s price to match the Slim PS3 may still not be enough to encourage people to select an Xbox over a PS3 though since it does not include the extra features which can be found in the PS3. Also one of the main advantages which the Xbox 360 had previously was that it had a larger game library since it has been on the market for a year longer. However the gap is becoming much smaller. High quality console exclusives are fairly equal on the two consoles with Slim PS3 boasting the likes of LittleBigWorld, Grand Turismo HD and Metal Gear Solid 4 while the Xbox 360 prides itself on exclusive first person shooting games; Halo and Gears of War.

Results of a recent survey show that Xbox 360s breakdown 5 times as much as PS3s. Xbox’s main advantage of the Slim PS3 is improved online support although the Playstation Network is not far behind.

At this point most consumers would have little reason to go with the Xbox 360 over a Slim PS3. Microsoft  are going to have to pull something really impressive out of the bag and simply matching the new price isn’t going to cut it. On top of that, Microsoft may struggle to cut their price since they have not redesigned their console to produce them at a lower cost.

Before the Slim PS3 has even hit stores there are rumours of what the next step will be. Several rumours have been circulation the Internet that a 250GB version of the Slim PS3 is in the pipeline.

So, why is there a need for a 250GB Slim PS3? Most people get by fine on their currnet 80GB hard drives and there doesn’t seem to be much demand for larger hard drives yet. With the rapid increase in the number of games being downloaded to harddrives rather than stored on discs, there is a likelihood that over the next 4 years, people will be filling their hard drives up with games.

It could also be because more games will be installed on the hard drive to increase loading speeds. It has been said though that in the future Playstation installs for games will be a thing of the past, hinting that there are methods that do not require you to install a game on your Slim PS3 which will run just as fast.

With the high-end Slim PS3 now just £70 more expensive than the low-end Wii, Sony are expecting to save the console’s reputation but it is unclear if they are directly making any money from it. A report on Japanese TV has suggested the cost of the materials used to built a Slim PS3 are actually $100 dollars more than they being sold for.

What we don’t know is where the TV show got its figures from. In the past Sony have stated they lose 10% on each original PS3 sold, the numbers stated on the show may have been based on old information. Shortly before the announcement of the Slim PS3, Sony declared they had cut production cost by a massive 70%.

Sony have never reviled the exact cost for them to produce consoles so it is unlikely that the TV show is providing accurate figures but it does make you wonder if Sony are still subsidising the console’s cost in order to gain a larger market share.