A History of the Shrinking Game Console

After Sony's announcement of the PS3 Slim earlier this week, CNet took a look back at size-reducing hardware revisions over the past couple decades in console design, noting that they're gradually arriving sooner and sooner after the initial release. "Does that mean it'll creep even lower, into two-year or even yearly cycles between major revisions? Quite possibly, yes. It's worked very well with handheld gaming devices, and even some consumer electronics devices like iPods. Apple has turned out slimmer, more powerful versions of the iPod every year since 2001, and yearly events like E3 put continued pressure on console makers to show off something big. In the case of the PS3 Slim though, it could just be that the PS3 had to be pushed out to meet its launch window, and that the Slim is what Sony was going for in the first place. Advances in the PlayStation 3's core technology, like the cell processor, also underwent changes since the console launched, including changes to fabrication that have taken the chip down from 90 nanometers to 65, then 45 — the size that can be found inside the Slim. These changes meant less power consumption, smaller components, and easier cooling."

Comments

Re:They might pre-shink by losing the optical driv

[StreetStealth]

This could happen in the future, but not this console generation. And, despite what seems to be going around at some forums, most definitely not for the PS3!

I can see how the PSPgo's dispensation with the PSP's optical drive could give one the impression that such a move might be possible for Sony's home console, but the difference is much greater than what meets the eye.

The PSPgo is not a revision of the PSP platform. Sony was made fun of for insisting that the Go will exist parallel to the PSP in the market, but the fact is, Sony is trying for a completely different kind of console experience with the PSPgo than they did with the PSP.

The PSP was conceived as a little, handheld Playstation. Same kind of games, same kind of gameplay, just smaller. The PSPgo, on the other hand, is Sony's (too late?) attempt to compete with both the DS and the iPod Touch. It's geared toward a completely different kind of game, not scaled-down versions of home console games, but games conceived from the ground up to be portable, things you pick up and play for a few minutes and then put away when your number is called at the DMV. Despite the shared software architecture, the PSPgo is not at all like the PSP.

So to launch a PS3 with no optical drive would be to target a different kind of game. While there are some disc-based PS3 titles that have been re-released as downloadable, they are a tiny minority, and given the way that platform exclusives tend to be very free with asset file size due to Blu-Ray's disc capacity, there's a pretty hard technical reason for that as well.