Sony kicked of the inaugural Gamescom in Cologne with the not-so-surprising announcement of its new PS3 Slim console
he new Sony PS3 Slim. Photograph: Alex Grimm/Getty Images
The games industry has descended on Cologne in a rare old state of excitement. For some years now, Europe has had a videogames show that wan't really much of a rival to the American E3 – previously known, prosaically, as the Games Convention and based in Leipzig, a city about which it is nigh-impossible to be complimentary.
But this year it has rebooted itself as Gamescom, and moved to the refreshingly pleasant environs of Cologne in Germany. The result is a general feeling that a show which was on an upward curve yet still a poor relation has made a breakthrough this year, and with E3 itself staging a comeback after two dodgy years, it could be the pre-eminent forum for showcasing new games.
In the style of E3, Tuesday saw press conferences taking place before the show opened, and Sony grabbed centre stage. SCE Europe CEO Andrew House took the reins, running through latest sales figures for Sony's various consoles (the most impressive being for the thoroughly defunct PS2, which has now shifted 138.8m units globally and 51.5m in Europe) and swiftly skimming through its big upcoming games (of which Uncharted 2 looked the likeliest Christmas blockbuster, and the previously unannounced Digital Comics reader for the PSP intrigued).
But at the end of the spiel, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai, the big boss, took to the stage to unveil the PS3 Slim. Every Sony console has, at some stage of its life-cycle, been shoe-horned into a smaller package and sold at a lower price, and now the PS3 has had that treatment.
The PS3 Slim looks like a neat enough machine (although the one demonstrated by Hirai was whipped away from the stage the moment he walked off it) and has the advantage of a 120GB, rather than 80GB hard disk, and will retail at £250. Which is cheaper than the original PS3's £299, but still pricier than an Xbox 360 Elite, let alone lesser Xbox 360s.
Given that the magic price-point below which consoles sell in serious volumes is £200 (Electronic Arts' Peter Moore, in an interview, pointed out that 80% or thereabouts of the PS2's sales accrued after it slipped below £200), one has to wonder whether that is enough.
Sony, no doubt, would love to sell the PS3 Slim – which will be in the shops in September, while original PS3s are already in short supply and will quickly disappear from retail – for £200 but economics clearly preclude that.
Whether – given that we're still in a recession – that £50 price-cut will prove enough of an incentive this Christmas, when parents decide which console to buy for their kids, remains to be seen.
But one has to feel slightly for Sony: the PS3 Slim will retail at €299, so we Brits, with our recently devalued pound hovering not for from the €1 mark, should be grateful that we have a price-cut at all.
Sony studiously avoided any technical talk about the PS3 Slim, which suggests that it's more or less identical to the original PS3 under the skin. Which would be a shame if it is the case. Because the repackaging should have provided the perfect opportunity to slip in a newer-generation Blu-ray drive than version 1.0 effort in the PS3.
We'll be trying to find more about any technical advantages the PS3 Slim has over its predecessors in the coming days.
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