New PS3 Model Out Today, Exclusive First Look

PSone was a beautiful redesign, my favourite console design ever in fact. If there’d been a matte charcoal version I’d have snapped up a second one.

PS2’s first major redesign had the ugly shiny strip next to the disc tray. PS2’s second redesign removed the shiny strip and made the whole tray cover an ugly, uneven shiny plastic finish instead.

PS3’s first major redesign (the current slim) was good apart from the change of shape, rectangle shapes look better than square ones.

This PS3 redesign brings back the rectangle shape but also shiny. The problem is the grey-slightly-brownish shiny finish isn’t a deep black like the original PS3 and probably doesn’t have the translucency, reducing the cheap full-reflective property most shiny consoles have.

I can’t make my mind up whether I dislike or just think the ribbed texture is ok. I don’t think it’ll age well and obviously it’ll make wiping the system clean more difficult. The difference in height between the flimsy tray cover and what it slides over is unsightly. The violent tray opening when the system’s horizontal looks and sounds cheap, the dampened opening when the system is vertical should have also applied to horizontal.

I think this design’s too ambitious for the cheaper materials being used and the replacement of the slot loading BD drive makes it inconvenient to use horizontal in an entertainment centre with limited hand space above the system; and I wonder how sturdy the system is vertical for pushing a disc onto the spindle, without a stand – which few will buy.

Also I thought it was 25% lighter, 20% smaller in volume. The numbers are the other way round in the video.

As much as I dislike separate power bricks, maybe the PSU should have been separate for this redesign, to make it more strikingly small so there wasn’t so much pressure to make it striking with different textures and shapes.

It was never going to be PSone small but much nearer.

I feel like too much emphasis was put on (manufacture – BoM) price reduction and not on making it a more appealing new design.

A lot of these problems could be fixed if SCEI didn’t continue the one-size-fits-all manufacturing approach for their consoles.

Mass produce the cheap systems in the tens of millions as you are.

And design a much more profitable, high-end SKU using premium materials – aluminium, glass (Vita) etc, quieter more expensive fan or cooling system, PS2 backwards compatibility, more USB ports (but these should really be on the back of the cheap models too) and generally higher quality components. The same existing PS3 functionality, so it’s not like the PSX which added functionality and complexity and was probably too ambitious and expensive for its time, people weren’t taking media centres seriously like they do even consoles now.