Following speculation that a ‘Slim’ edition was in the pipeline, Sony officially announced the Playstation 3 Slim on August 18, 2009 at the Sony Gamescom press conference.

It will feature an upgradeable 120GB hard drive and is 33% smaller, 36% lighter, and consumes 34% less power than previous models.

The PS3 Slim will also include support for BRAVIA Sync allowing control of the PS3 Slim over HDMI and will run quieter than previous PS3 models.

The PS3 Slim will focus on delivering games and other entertainment content and removes the feature to install other Operating Systems to the PS3 Slim.

The PS3 Slim will be priced at $299/€299/£249/¥29980 and is scheduled to be released on September 1, 2009 in North America and Europe and on September 3, 2009 in Japan.