Penny Arcade on the PS3 slim

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I don't think Sony needed to make a slim per se. What they needed to do was make a machine they could sell at $299 without killing the company in the process. To make an economically viable $299 PS3 there were component modifications they needed to make and that meant making smaller parts that carried out the same functions. They could have easily put all the space saving components in a Phat shell and shipped a whole lot of Japanese air around the world and the $299 120Gig Phat would have sold very well. But why export air when it takes up so much space and ends up costing you money? They'll be able to cram at least 20% more slims into a shipping container than Phats, that's an expense worth saving. If there is a sudden shortage of PS3s in a market they will be able to airfreight an urgent re-supply at a much lower cost.

Yep they probably could have introduced an economically viable $299 Phat now and then done the Slim in a year's time. But doing the Slim as soon as you have the capability makes more financial sense. Maybe they wouldn't have made a slim quite so soon if they were in 2nd or 1st place, but they probably only brought it forward by a year which is hardly a big deal.

And besides when you bring out a slim you get a whole lot of people who bought a phat to go buy another brand new machine that does exactly the same thing (assuming you don't own a launch 60Gig). I'm picking a good 5% of current PS3 owners are gonna pick themselves up a slim before the end of the year. That's 1 million PS3's sold to people who already own a PS3.