New slim PS3 to land later this year?

The PlayStation 3 is currently a very large, and heavy console

Sony will launch a new slim-lined PlayStation 3 console in the second half of 2008. That's according to our buddies over at T3, who got the juicy gossip from a clued-up industry insider.

The rumour is that the new PS3 will be much slimmer and weigh a lot less than the current model. That's not hard to believe - the PS3 is physically the biggest PlayStation console Sony has ever built. It's also the heaviest, so the benefits from such a move are obvious.

PS3 to go on a diet?

If the rumours - and they are just rumours at this stage - are true, this could tie in with Sony's recent announcement that it has cut its PS3 build cost in half. So instead of each PS3 costing Sony £400 to build, they now only cost £200.

This is partly down to Sony's efforts to shrink down a lot of the components used inside the console. Among the parts that have been improved are the processing chips and also the Blu-ray laser modules.

And a raft of smaller components clearly would give Sony the option of making slimmer consoles.

There are other rumours that Sony is about to unleash a PS3 console with a great deal more storage - some say up to 160GB. Could the slim PS3 also be the high-capacity PS3? It's certainly possible.

But let's just take a step backwards for a second. Sony has a track record of releasing slimmed-down, lighter versions of its consoles. It did it for both the original PlayStation consoles (albeit a lot later in their life cycles) and has also recently done the same for the PSP handheld.

So, that Sony will release a slimmer PS3 at some point is an absolute given. The time-scale is what's interesting here. And one thing's for sure, a new look would certainly go a long way towards shedding the PS3's somewhat tarnished image among gamers.

James Rivington

James was part of the TechRadar editorial team for eight years up until 2015 and now works in a senior position for TR's parent company Future. An experienced Content Director with a demonstrated history of working in the media production industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-commerce Optimization, Journalism, Digital Marketing, and Social Media. James can do it all.