Overnight ‘news’ surfaced of an apparent advert from Best Buy ‘confirming’ that the PS3 Slim was real, and would launch at $299.98, which was picked up by this blog and then our friends at PlayStation Lifestyle. As far as we can tell though, the ‘Slim’ in the advert, the source of which is still up in the air, is from the now famous NeoGAF thread (Update: confirmed here) and thus we can’t imagine Best Buy sticking the image on one of their catalogues.
Backtracking on the above links happened overnight, with the originating blog’s source claiming that he “cannot reveal [his] exact role” but that he works with “the marketing department at Best Buy” and the ad is a “mock up at best of the ad to be released in just over two weeks.” Quite why someone in a marketing department would need to use a mobile phone to grab the images is anyone’s guess when they’d just be on screen, but that’s the internet.
The fact is that nobody has seen the PS3 Slim outside of Sony. There’s no point of sale going up in stores, there’s no official images on any online retailer and there’s nothing in any magazine that would suggest a release date or price apart from internet rumour, but for whatever reason the slightest nugget of information on the new PlayStation 3, such as it is, is massive news. Our advice? Wait until Gamescom or TGS when hopefully we’ll hear more.