The new PS3, a smaller, slide-loading (or top-loading) machine with the model number CECH-4000 is expected to be properly introduced at gamescom in August, following leaks over the last couple of weeks that first showed the console’s label on the FCC website and then photos emerged of the actual casing.
The latter leak is perhaps the most interesting, as an accompanying letter from SCE detailed the various hard drive sizes that would be included in the available options. CECH-4011B would come with a 250GB drive, CECH-4011C with a whopping 500GB drive and – surprise! – a CECH-4011A will arrive with a 16GB drive.
Except we’re, along with others, assuming that that 16GB isn’t a hard drive but a flash drive. You might have heard of this as solid state.
Let’s assume that none of the above is fake, and it’s all real, genuine and leaked unintentionally. That’s probably a realistic assumption, but it’s worth getting that down and out of the way. If anything turns out to be false, then the rest of this article won’t really make much sense, especially that bit about the flash drive.
[drop]Where does that particular reasoning come from? Firmware 4.20, mostly. When it was released it was found that a couple of small changes to text had been made, and discovered in the following days.“Eject Disc” to “Remove Disc” – hence the top loading rumours, and “System Storage” is now in the XMB instead of “Hard Disk”.
Because of this, it’s not a huge leap to assume that the PS3 will soon be able to accept an SSD (solid state drive) or, at the very least, come with one as standard. That 16GB CECH-4011A then, is highly likely to offer this new technology.
Now, 16GB isn’t a lot. It’s four times that on the 4GB super-cheap Xbox 360 but PS3 games tend to come with massive installs (Gran Turismo 5’s alone will soak up more than half of the available space) so that actual number is somewhat redundant at this limited size. It’s infinitely larger than my first Amiga hard drive (which was 20MB) but will fill up much, much faster.
So it’s presumably also safe to assume two more things. One, this isn’t a machine aimed at gamers out of the box; and two, you’ll be able to plug in a separate hard drive that will take the place of the SSD, or act in conjunction with it alongside a firmware update to allow games to save to either device.
The two points go hand in hand – and the prospect of additional down-the-line hardware in the shape of nicely presented (and, we’re guessing, expensive) hard drives will go some way to satisfy the likes of GAME who will be selling this 16GB PlayStation 3 at a bargain bucket rate on the high street and looking for bundle deals. This thing will be cheap, it has to be – it has to match up with the 4GB Xbox 360, or better it – solus.
But there’s another market to consider. A market that’s looking for a device that plays Blu-rays, connects to LoveFILM, Netflix and iPlayer. A market that won’t ever sit and watch Polyphony’s progress bar lie its way through the world’s most tedious sixty minute install. A market that just wants to watch, and listen, not play.
Microsoft are big on this market – we’ve discussed at length how the Xbox 360 is actively trying to push games aside and Microsoft themselves have published figures that suggest people spend more time on their console streaming media than playing games. Console buyers are no longer buying consoles just to play games, those days are long gone and aren’t ever likely to return.
[drop2]And Sony are also now fighting against Smart TVs. My Samsung bought last year for 3D (yeah) offers pretty much everything the PS3 does in terms of media (including YouTube and various movie streaming services) out of the box, without any additional hardware. It might not do them as slickly as a PS3 would, but it’s included in the price of the unit.Sony will want to get the message across that this cheap PS3 offers connectivity like nothing else in a box that’ll sit under your TV and work with a TV-like remote control, not just a game console controller. Bundle in the PlayTV remote, heck, bundle in PlayTV, and market this to an emerging market that won’t care about next-generation graphics. They won’t even know there’s a new generation of devices just around the corner.
Of course, there’s more Sony could do.
A new patent discovered on GAF suggests that Sony are thinking outside of the box – literally. It details a TV in a HDMI home network that offers up a common user interface – like the XMB. It’ll change depending on the components used, and will use HDMI to control other devices connected up. Like your PS3.
Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) isn’t new, but it’ll be new for consoles. If Sony are planning to offer this as part of these new models then it further shows that they’re wanting to push the media abilities of the PlayStation 3 well beyond the reach of just gamers – controlling a Blu-ray player like the PS3 (with all the PS3’s XMB overlaid onto the display) with your TV remote could be fantastic.
The reasons for a 16GB PS3 are obvious – then. It has massive potential as a media streaming box (and we’re not even talking about Gaikai here) and the PS3’s Blu-ray capabilities are (for me at least) still unmatched, and it offers great DVD playback too along with pretty much everything else.
If it’s cheap, boxed correctly and marketed well, this could be huge.
Gadbury
What about Gaikai and streaming games? 16GB would be fine for that, too.
hol
Maybe they should’ve just added a rear facing e-sata port & had just a 16gb model?
BalramRules
…or simply to compete with Microsoft. ;D
Ed the Penguin
I still think that it may have been a typo and they just missed an 0 at the end..
wirralsman
I see this as Sony putting out a little experiement to test the waters before the final things like PS4 HDD disk size/type etc are finalised
Alisha1995
is anyone thinking that the 16gb is for Gaikai streaming?! exciting prospect, and i think that is what its for!
bunimomike
Good, strong article, Al. The right balance of common sense with conjecture. Sony are in a situation where they’ve sold millions of PS3s to gamers so it makes sense to get an entry-level version into the home of everyone else. Especially if they manage to make streaming work (with the likes of Gaikai) one day.
Alex C
Thanks.
cam the man
The 16GB PS3 would work well with Gaikai. You would only need the SSD for game saves and stuff like minis etc. that don’t take up much storage space.
cam the man
Didn’t notice the ‘page 2’ icon when posting so sorry about the repetition of Gadbury and Alisha1995’s comments.
Awayze
There’s no USB port on the back so the external HDD will look stupid connected at the front.
Sony should have just made the 16GB version but with a USB port on the back so people can connect external HDD’s.
Workshed
Errr… SSD drives with a SATA interface use a SATA interface – to the PS3 they look just like any other SATA drive. There’s no coming support for them, they’ve always been able to be used. Digital Foundry even did a load time comparison with SSDs yonks ago.
Also in my opinion suddenly changing the PS3 SDK to support two hard drives would be quite an expensive thing to do this late in the lifecycle. The 16GB PS3 is aimed at being as cheap as possible, nothing more.
bunimomike
SSDs were almost redundant with slow controllers on the current PS3s but they might jazz up a future controller if an SSD is in there from the off.
Workshed
I agree, I was just commenting on this part of the article: “Because of this, it’s not a huge leap to assume that the PS3 will soon be able to accept an SSD (solid state drive)”
Should any of these new PS3’s include SSDs they won’t be fancy ones.
Alex C
I didn’t appreciate that this was the case, thanks for the correction.