you look at your console instead of watching the games you play on the screen?

Looks terrible but Sony can win the holidays if they decide to with this. Pricing as mentioned before would be key to that success tho.

I like this design a lot. It reminds me of the PC Engine Duo-R.  I also like the sliding door instead of the flip top due to wear and tear those designs sometimes suffer.  If you've ever owned a Dreamcast or PSX after much usage the latch begins to weaken and the plastic hinge can break.  I think the ridge design is meant for you to grip the door easily and to show less wear on the left side it will slide over.

They should also launch a playstation brand specific harddrive for that 16gb one just like Microsoft did for the 4gb and arcade models of the 360. And I can't stress enough how much I hope they've increased the Blu-ray drives read speed. 

2x just isn't going to cut it unless you just stick to exclusives.

Oh, did not know that :P

199$ for the cheapest version seems about right

I'm thinking that will be the pricing model, too.  If you think about it, even when there isn't an official pricecut, Sony still continually upgrades the size of the HDD.  So it is only natural that they would have upgraded the $249 model with a 250GB HDD this year even if there wasn't a new Slim coming out.  But since there is a new Slim, with reduced cost in manufactoring and shipping, they will be upgrading the HDD and cutting the price at the same time.  So the 250GB should definitely be priced at $199, with the 500GB taking over the $249 price point.  I would guess the 16GB is going to be priced at $149-$169.  I think Sony is going to have a very nice holiday season this year.

It doesn't even look that much smaller. I want it to be the size of a PS2 slim or a Wii. Hopefully they can achieve that with the 4th slim model because I don't see any reason to upgrade otherwise.

Well, if it sits in my room.... I'm going to see it.  I'd also see if while playing, too. I appreciate the design and arcitecture of a console, but this just looks terrible. Hopefully this is a prototype before it is released.

That's even uglier than the PS2 and that was an ugly system. Why change the design so much, the last PS3 looks fine. If Sony wanted to save money they could have reduced the cost inside and left the outside the same.