This Tuesday Sony officially and finally announced the PS3 Slim.  It’ll use less power and fit into smaller places than the current models.  But it will still have the smaller library of games, the Playstation Network will still be inferior to Xbox Live and you still won’t be able to play any PS2 games on it.  I’m sure Sony is pleased that this will help them catch Microsoft for the number two spot of current generation consoles.  It probably won’t.

If anything is able to help Sony it’s the price drop.  The slim model will cost less and they finally came to the realization that no one wants to pay $400 for a videogame console right now.  It’s just too bad for them that their competitors figured that out last year.  Not to mention that now that they’ve dropped their price, Microsoft will probably do the exact same thing.  And since the Playstation brand is nowhere near what it used to be, saying that you still have the most expensive machine but now it’s smaller, isn’t going to help you get them out of the hole they dug themselves.  It’s not like this thing is coming with a book reminding Sony how to sell systems.  A redesign doesn’t fix all the problems they’ve had with marketing the last few years.  The problems with the PS3 have never been about the hardware.  Only fanboys and people with a taste for ignorance would say the PS3 isn’t great hardware.  The problems are coming from the people running the show.  You can’t say the upcoming lineup for the PS3 doesn’t look amazing… well you can say that because whoever’s doing the ad campaigns for Sony is an idiot.  Now when people think videogames they think Nintendo and Microsoft and that company with the expensive console.  Even though the price difference between the PS3 and the 360 hasn’t been that big since the PS3 launch.  People still think of it as the $600 console.  Microsoft has gotten people to think of the 360 as a hip device with glorious amounts of synergy.  Sweet delicious synergy.  Success of products rarely rests on one’s quality it has to do with convincing your products better than the alternative.

To me making a smaller, streamlined system is not a surprise.  Both the original Playstation and the PS2 eventually got the same treatment.  However both of those came out as the successor was known to be in the works.  The slim is coming out much sooner than I thought it would and it seems that Sony is reaching into their bag of tricks a little too soon. Dropping the price too late and bringing out a redesign too soon makes me see how poorly Sony is handling their products.   Maybe this will do really well and companies will start making more games for the PS3.  We’ll start finding out in September whether or not the Slim will matter.  With Microsoft and Nintendo still far ahead redesigning your hardware may not be enough.     
 
 
 
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