During the whole PS3 Slim fiasco (“It’s real!”, “It’s not real!”), a user on N4G by the name of Super_Secret claimed the new hardware iteration was real, and it was coming. Still, most did not believe him.
The user told the N4G forums that he was an employee of Sony, and worked in the hardware department. That’s how he knew the Slim was coming. He also told the forums that Firmware 2.8 was coming June 24th, and that it wasn’t known because it wasn’t that important. And guess what, he was right.
The PS3 was updated on June 24th 2009, and Super_Secret was then known as a reliable leak. Although a lot knew that the PS3 Slim was real after accidental listings, etc, it was then safe to know that Super_Secret was the real deal.
BLPGaming, being the nice guys they are, put a list together depicting what Super_Secret said about the PS3 Slim, and if it was true.
1. It still has Bluetooth [TRUE]
2. It still has Gigabit Ethernet [TRUE]
3. “OtherOS” support has been removed [TRUE]
4. You still get 2 USB ports [TRUE]
5. Hard drive sizes will be bigger, it will come in 120Gb and 250Gb flavours [TRUE]
6. It’s still replaceable [HDD] and will actually be slightly easier as it has been relocated to the front of the console [TRUE]
7. It will NOT have any “new” features, such as backwards compatibility [PS2] or enhanced peripheral support [TRUE]
8. It’s just a PS3, but slightly smaller and cheaper [TRUE]
9. The power supply is still internal, but a different power cable will be used [TRUE]
10. Rear ports are still the same: 1x HDMI, 1x Sony AV port, 1x Optical, 1x Ethernet, and of course a power port [TRUE]
11. It’s as cheap as can possibly be, so expect it to launch with a smaller price tag than what you’re paying now in your respective territories [TRUE]
12. Internally, several daughter boards have been removed, but all functionality is still there [UNCONFIRMED]
13. A Cheaper Blu-ray drive is being used [TRUE]
14. It wont be any slower, but expect to see similar issues that another competitor had a while ago [UNCONFIRMED]
15. Touch-sensitive buttons on the front for power/eject are gone in favour of cheaper push buttons [TRUE]
16. It has a slightly different startup screen. Only slightly [TRUE]
17. It’s about 50% smaller than current PS3s.[TRUE]
18. It wont be called the “PS3 Slim”. The PS1 “slim” and the PS2 “slim” were never officially called the “slim”, either.[UNCONFIRMED]
19. In short: It’s a smaller PS3, but that’s it. No new features, no special hardware, just smaller and cheaper.[TRUE]
20. And it wont have sex with you.[SAD FACE]
And with that last comment, we move on. When Firmware 3.0 was revealed two days ago, a lot of PS3 gamers were disappointed with the absence of cross-game voice chat. However, this comment from Super_Secret proves otherwise that voice-chat is coming.
“Cross-game [voice] chat is in the works as part of Firmware 3.0. It wont be out during the summer, but assuming all goes well, it will be out well before the holidays. Current timeframe places it around September, but it’s still very much a WIP(Work In Progress). If there are any major delays, that will slip and if there are very few delays at all, it might even arrive earlier, but don’t bank on it as it is a lot more complicated than you might imagine. At this point, it’s working quite well in the labs and supports several players at once. It’s targeted to work with all past and future games that support ingame XMB, much like text chat. I’m not a betting man, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the “slim” shipped with this firmware installed (that doesn’t mean the slim will come first, remember).”
Considering Super_Secret was both right about Firmware 2.8 and the PS3 Slim, it’s not hard to assume that he will be right about this as well.
Stay with PlayStation LifeStyle as we’ll be giving out the details on Firmware 3.0 as they hit.
