Kmart, the always thorn in the eye of Walmart, has a great deal for potential PS3 owners: a 250 GB PS3 slim for $300 — $50 less than usual. Not a bad deal, considering that the 120 GB costs the same.

Epic hacker and modder Ben Heck, who’s done his share of mods and hacks over the years, is introducing the PS3 Slim laptop, a fully functioning PS3 slim console, with an HD screen, in a portable form factor (sort of). It’s now on eBay and the current bid is $2500.

It’s always been known that Sony was losing a lot of money on each PlayStation 3 console, but since the PS3 slim was released, those costs have come down drastically. According to iSuppli, the PS3 slim now costs Sony $336 to manufacture, while it retails for $300.

The company says that the most expensive part is still the blu-ray drive, which costs $66, while the Nvidia RSX GPU costs $45, the 120 GB harddrive $38, and the Cell CPU $38.

While Sony’s still losing money on each console sold, it’s a far cry from the previous $850 dollar manufacturing price per console, when it was launched back in 2006.

While the Aussies (and most likely the Europeans and North Americans) will be getting 250 GB bundles with the standard, black PS3 slim console, the lucky Japanese will have something quite different.

The Final Fantasy XIII bundle in Japan will come with FF XII and a 250 GB white limited edition PS3 slim with Final Fantasy artwork, easily making it the prettiest PS3 by far. The bundle will be available for 42,000 Yen, or $460 USD.

Sony has proudly announced that the PS3 slim has sold 1 million units in only 3 weeks, making it by far the best selling console out there during that period. The new console is not only cheaper, cooler and draws less power than the original PS3, it’s also sold at $299, far cheaper than the original (remember the $599, 60 GB PS3 that launched in 2006?). For more on the PS3 slim, check out our PS3 slim review.

One sure way of hyping any consumer product is to make folks know there’s a shortage, whether it’s true or not. Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton told Reuters that there might be a shortage of PS3 slim consoles, if the sales continue the way they are now. “If things continue at this pace, it is conceivable that there will be product shortages,” Tretton said, after noting the console’s sales are up 300 percent over last year since its price was cut by $100. “We are up significantly versus last year”, he concluded. There’s no doubt that PS3 slim has been very popular, it has topped the charts in all three major territories, for the first time since its release in 2006.

Developers and Linux fanboys aren’t exactly pleased with Sony’s decision to leave OtherOS support out of the PlayStation 3 slim. It was previously only speculated why it was left out, but today Sony gives a reason behind their move; money.

“The reasons are simple: The PS3 Slim is a major cost reduction involving many changes to hardware components in the PS3 design,” SCEE’s Sarah Ewen said. “In order to offer the OtherOS install, SCE would need to continue to maintain the OtherOS hypervisor drivers for any significant hardware changes – this costs SCE.”

Ewen continues on to say that the main objective behind the Slim is to offer a lower price, and the cost of OtherOS did not meet the standards to lower the price.

Be sure to read up on our review of the PlayStation 3 Slim in case you’re still on the fence about buying it.

Read (Exophase)

The PS3 Slim is one of the most highly sought after consoles on the market to date (argueable, I know, but it’s just been announced) which might make owners of the PS3 Fat feel a bit left out.

Well, lucky for you guys GameStop has recently announced a promotion that will give $150 credit to anyone who trades in a PS3 Fat towards the purchase of a PS3 Slim.

Then again, you can probably just slap your PS3 Fat on eBay and get much more than you would from GameStop, but it’s the laziness that counts, right?

via psxextreme

Sony has desperately needed a price cut for the PS3, which it now has received, among other things. The PS3 Slim — technically it’s just called a PlayStation 3 — is about a third lighter and smaller than the previous console. The Cell CPU in the new PS3 is built using the 45nm process, and combined with updates to other parts of the hardware, the console uses less than half of the power of a first gen PS3. It’s still unknown whether other hardware, mainly the RSX graphics chip, is also built using the new 45nm process, but considering the improvements on power efficiency, it doesn’t really matter at this point.

Spec wise, the PS3 has a 120 GB hard drive as standard (which can be replaced by any 2.5″ hard drive of any size), but like the other model, it can’t play PS2 games (PSOne are all playable). It’s also a more stripped down version — there’s no card reader, only has two USB ports, and a stripped down WiFi without draft N support, which is kind of a shame, as almost all devices support the far superior N draft. The new console has the same slot loading 2X Blu-ray drive, and we experienced it to be noticeably quieter when watching Blu-ray movies. Overall, the console seems to be running cooler and quieter, especially during Blu-ray movie playback, as mentioned before. READ ON »

Here we go again, more PS3 Slim rumors — Buzz circulating the internet suggests that the PS3 Slim bundle is, in fact, coming to market this August bundled with Madden NFL 2010.

This rumor comes to us from the 1UP.com’s latest podcast in which David Ellis has been quoted to say:

It’s gonna be in August. Everything I’ve heard says it’s coming in August, it’s tied with Madden.

And, to add even more heat to the flame, Ellis said that this may have been the cause for Activision’s much publicized threat against Sony. Apparantly, the megapublisher was mad that Sony had opted to bundle an EA game with the console as opposed to an Activision one.

Take this as you will but at this point it remains just a rumor. We’ll have to wait until next month before we find out if a PS3 Slim is actually on its way to market.