It seems the people at Sony have failed to understand all the reviews that said that the price of the PS3 is supposed to be a lot smaller.

According to the dark satanic rumour mill, they seem to have misheard the word smaller price and come up with a smaller console. Well these things often lose meaning in the translation. A deep throat told Ars Technica that the slimmed-down PS3 will appear in August or September. Engadget came into possession of supposedly leaked pictures of a smaller PS3 a few weeks ago but the concept seemed rather unlikely.

Recently however the sites than ran the picture received a cease and desist letter from a Chinese company saying that pictures contained "confidential information." Unlike then hacks were happy to think that the pictures were a fake, so which ever Chinese company thought that threatening the press would make the story go away scored an own goal by confirming that something was up.

Now that the project has been confirmed by a deep throat, with actual dates it seems that really is happening. Don't expect any announcements at the moment. Sony is hoping that punters will buy the older gear that is sitting gathering dust on the shelves before it releases the new stuff. As Ars says why tell customers that new hardware is coming when you're trying to clear the retail channel of your older model.

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Ars Technica