During the Gamescon conference yesterday, Sony announced the release of the much rumoured PS3 Slim.

Quite possibly the worst kept secret of this year, Sony's current generation console, the Playstation 3 is going to have a bit of an overhaul.

Featuring a slimmer design, Sony are boasting that it will be 34% lighter, will draw 36% less power and will come with a 120GB hard drive. The new design measures at 290mm width by 65 mm height by 290 length.

SCEA's director of marketing John Koller, has quashed rumours of Playstation 2 backwards compatibility.

“Now that we're at a point where we're three years into the lifecycle of the PS3, there are so many PS3 disc-based games that are available that we think — and noticed this from our research — that most consumers that are purchasing the PS3 cite PS3 games as a primary [reason]”

"And it's not just like 50 or 60 percent. It's well into the 80 or 90 percentile range who are purchasing it for PS3 [games]. We do know that there are next gen consumers wanting to come over to the PS3. Most of those are consumers who have not utilized their PS2 for a little while and they're ready to jump into the PlayStation 3."

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