According to rumours, Sony has put in place production deals with Foxconn and Pegatron to manufacture the new units which new machines coming off the production lines by the end of July 2009.  They are likely to head on to the shelves in Asia initially before being well placed in the Western PS3 markets in time for the US holiday season.

Both the XBox 360 and PS3 have been criticised for their bulky design, drew in part from the need to aerate the powerful CPU and GPU’s running inside the machine, but improvements in fan technology and chip design has enabled Sony to be able to construct a new slimline design which will give the console a huge boost.

Images of the new machine have already been doing the rounds on the net, this is believed to represent an image of a pack shot for the new machine.

Potential PS3 purchases may be put on hold for the next 2 months as people wait to see the new price for the PS3 Slim.

The plans are based on Sony registering a new system with the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) in the States and a story suggesting that Best Buy, the major American retailer, has already been informed of the decision.

Christmas 2007 will be the first major holiday season in which Microsoft and Sony will compete with their next generation consoles.  Although many gamers know the PS3 is by far the better system, the pricing has helped the XBox 360 maintain a large slice of the console cake.

All eyes on Sony.

It is believed September will be the UK’s second biggest month (behind launch month) in terms of PS3 sales, with sales levels rising at the August Bank Holiday.

Many retailers are now bundling extra games and wireless pads in at the same price that the machine alone was selling for only months ago.

While it is too early to speculate of a Christmas rush the industry believes that PlayStation’s will be sold far earlier in the Autumn this year due to a number of factors including the poor weather which has left consumers with more money in their pocket than in previous years.

Could we be about to see a Christmas panic as Sony’s PlayStation 3 runs dry across the country?

Keep up to date with the latest PS3 deals, and our top recommendation here

Sony is not cutting the price of the PlayStation 3 in Europe, but will offer free games and accessories instead.

There is also no word of plans for an 80GB version of the console in Europe.

Last week Sony said it would drop the US price of the 60GB PS3 by $100 (£50), and introduced a new 80GB version at the original price of $599 (£300).

In Europe gamers will get a “starter pack” at an unchanged price of £425 for the 60GB machine, with two games and two controllers included.

The new pack was announced at the E3 games conference in Santa Monica, in California. Sony says it is offering gamers £115 worth of added games and controller, for no extra charge.

But the firm could face criticism from gamers for deciding not to reduce the price of the 60GB PS3 and not announcing the 80GB machine.

Earlier this week, Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said he thought the US price cut would at least “double” the sales of PS3 in the country.

But in an interview with games website Gamesindustry.biz, David Reeves, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, revealed that once the stock of 60GB machines was sold out in the US – probably by the end of July – the model would no longer be sold.

That would mean that US gamers would once again have to pay $599 for a full-spec console with features such as wi-fi, not available on the cheaper 20GB model.

In the UK, the PlayStation 3 remains £125 more expensive than the equivalent Xbox 360 bundle of console and games and £225 more expensive than the Nintendo Wii with two games.

Official PS3 Specs

Here are the official technical specifications for the PS3, taken directly from Sony:

CPU
Cell Processor
PowerPC-base Core @3.2GHz
1 VMX vector unit per core
512KB L2 cache
7 x SPE @3.2GHz
7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
7 x 256KB SRAM for SPE
* 1 of 8 SPEs reserved for redundancy
total floating point performance: 218 GFLOPS

GPU
RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines

Sound
Dolby 5.1ch, DTS, LPCM, etc. (Cell- base processing)
Memory
256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

System Bandwidth
Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SBSystem Floating Point Performance
2 TFLOPS

Storage
Detachable 2.5″ HDD slot x 1

I/O
USB Front x 4, Rear x 2 (USB2.0)
Memory Stick standard/Duo, PRO x 1
SD standard/mini x 1
CompactFlash (Type I, II) x 1

Communication
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x 3 (input x 1 + output x 2)
Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR)

Controller
Bluetooth (up to 7)
USB 2.0 (wired)
Wi-Fi (PSP)
Network (over IP)

AV Output
Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
HDMI: HDMI out x 2
Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1
Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1

Disc Media
CD PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer), SACD HD, DualDisc, DualDisc (audio side), DualDisc (DVD side)
DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, PlayStation 3 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE