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PS3 Slim Has Arrived

[Gaming] blog post By Dana Olson at 2009-11-25 19:16:18, updated 2009-11-25 20:28:18 4 43 199 933     13

I got my first PS3 slim today, and I knew it'd be smaller, but it's more smaller than I thought it would be. Well, it's lighter than I thought it'd be, at least.

I hooked her up, named her SlimJim, and transferred all of my saves over via a full system backup from the other PS3 that I own in my same household. And by "all," I mean some, since a bunch of games wouldn't restore because, you know, letting me play my games on my PS3s would be pro-consumer, or something. Just a few of the games that would not restore are: Mercenaries 2, Lost Planet, Demon's Souls, UNO, The Godfather, Guitar Hero Metallica, UFC 2009 Unleashed, Wolfenstein, Killzone 2, and more I don't care to list. I do wish that the Saved Game section of the XMB had a Copy Multiple and a Delete Multiple option, because it would save a lot of time doing a full backup and restore to a new system that only ends up restoring the exact same saves that I could manually copy and restore if I had the patience and time to do them all one-by-one (I think I have hundreds... At least dozens, especially Fallout 3, Oblivion, Metal Gear Solid 4 - I made lots of saves at various points). The backup process really should skip over all the installed Game Data, because I had to delete tons of stuff - my Capcom games each took about 5GB, as did my Bethesda games, and Sacred 2 was around 5GB, and so on. All that stuff should be left out of backups, because to do the backup, I had to delete it in the first place, and restoring it to a new PS3 isn't supported anyhow, so why back it up at all? Anyhow... Oh yeah, my trophies won't sync. I was getting an error from time to time, like most people are, on my other PS3, but on the slim, it gets to 5% and then bails. Some kind of PSN bug, I'm sure they have top men working on it around the clock.

So, after the restore, I queued up a bunch of my PSN downloads. There really should be something changed about this. For example, my download list has close to 450 items in it. Demos don't need to be in there, really, unless they were special demos acquired by codes (God of War 3, for example). There's no way to queue up everything you want to download all at once, either. You can download 32 items at a time, and you can't queue more until something finishes downloading, and you can't queue something new if something has not yet been installed. It'd be handy to be able to check off all of my PSN games that I want to download and then queue them all at once. As it is, I have to remember what the last thing on my download list was that I queued, once it's cleared out enough that I can add more. I'll have to do this a bunch of times before all of my games are re-downloaded.

Also, it'd be nice if we could manage the systems that our PSN accounts are activated on remotely - ie: from our PSN account section on PlayStation.com, because my first PS3 that broke was apparently still active under my ID, as I was never instructed to deactivate it before sending it in. A call to Sony support fixed that, but full control would be nice. Even just an option to wipe all activations would be useful.

Anyhow, back to the unit itself. I really prefer the matte black finish, and I like that the buttons light up. And the little ledge where the buttons rest has a charcoal or lead-looking glossy finish, which is pretty sexy. I don't like the sides of the unit, which are regular glossy, like the old PS3s. But overall, it's very slick.

The buttons click nicely, the power cable is only two-pronged like the newer PS2 slims, versus the old PC-standard grounded cables that the fat PS3s use. I didn't measure power consumption, though I will later; as it was one of the biggest reasons I chose the 40GB PS3 over the backwards-compatible PS3s at the time.

I don't know what I was expecting, but opening the box up was underwhelming. You pull out three cables, a controller, a manual and then all that's left is the PS3 itself and a bunch of structural cardboard. I dunno... I knew that's all that would be in there, but for some reason, I wasn't expecting it. I can't really explain it. I think it'd be cool if Sony packed in like, a demo disc or something for future customers - put maybe demos of the recent PS3 exclusives and a "welcome to the PlayStation 3!" video demonstrating the latest firmware. Sure, customers can just download the demos, but you can't beat a shiny new disc for those with no or slow internet connections, plus having a little something to test out immediately out of the box. It would add to costs, and really isn't necessary, I know. Just, I remember the days of pack-ins. My first PS3 even had a [crappy] Blu-ray movie included (Spiderman 3). It just makes things more exciting. But enough about this. Oh yeah, the USB charge cable tricked me at first; I thought it was an HDMI cable until I opened the plastic wrapper. Heh.

It seems like it's roughly the same as the old PS3 in terms of perfomance, though booting Peggle for the first time seemed to take an awfully long time (but still measured in seconds). Could have just been me, I dunno.

I haven't tested the bitmapping audio support yet, but I think it's only for movies anyhow. My TV is, sadly, not a Sony, so the XMB control option (I forget the real term) doesn't impact me at all. Also, I run Linux on all of my computers, so I don't miss the ability to install it on my gaming console, which I bought for gaming.

The hard drive is easily replaceable, but a tad less convenient compared to the older PS3. You need to access a screw on the bottom of the unit; you can't just pop the plastic cover off and slide it out the side. Not a big issue, though I did use the side access on my fat PS3 several times for upgrades in the past. I haven't replaced the drive yet, but I did remove and reinsert it to see. It just slides in and out rather than in and to the back like on the older PS3s. A minor difference, just thought I'd mention it.

Not really much else to say. I bought it because I had Sony Points saved up, enough to pay for over half of it, and I found a $25-off coupon (which I posted as a news story the other day), and my buddy's Blu-ray drive just died on him outside of warranty, so he may be buying my older model. For the $131 it cost me on my actual credit card, it was a pretty fine deal. If I hold on to my old PS3, I'll be happy with that. It'll go in the bedroom on a crappy SD TV for now, and hopefully upgrade that to a small LCD later on, and ceiling mount it for lay-down gaming sessions. Ah, that would be awesome.

By the way: Canadians who want to earn Sony Points, get a Sony Mastercard from MBNA. You spend $1 on it, you get 1 point. 1 Point is 1 cent. You can redeem points at SonyStyle.ca for anything there, but you need enough points to cover half of the cost of the item(s) I believe (that was the case with the PS3, at least). I don't know if there's a similar option in the USA or elsewhere.

I have had issues trying to register and purchase Sony Care for this new unit, as SonyStyle.ca doesn't accept the model or purchase date, respectively. I submitted a support request to them explaining the problems with their site, and they totally ignored me and directed me to contact Sony Tech Support for problems with my PS3. WTF?

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