Good News: Someone’s got hold of the Sony VAIO X11 and filmed an unboxing. Bad News: The site that did it is a German language tech site by the name of Newgadgets.de. Good News: They speak great English in the video…

The above version is in English, but you know where to look for the German one.

Essentially, it’s a thin VAIO with a theoretical 8 hour battery span, Atom processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSDPA/HSUPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS, camera and an on button.

Great find, Newgadgets. Mad props to you.

[Newgadgets.de]

In all of it’s great genius, the BBC consumer affairs show Watchdog, presented by recently facelifted mean woman from that gameshow involving chains and insults, Anne Robinson, has decided to attack Sony because some PS3s are breaking out of warranty.

At the time of writing, the programme is airing on BBC 1, and Iain Lee will apparently be fronting the piece, which according to a letter by Sony, involves the Beeb sitting outside the front of Sony’s UK HQ in a van marked “PlayStation Repair Action Team” (or “PRAT” as the work experience kid would have said as he made the accronym work) giving “free” servicing of dead consoles because the “unjustly” Sony won’t.

Cue preemptive writing from Ray Maguire, with a nice 18 point letter showing the show’s mistakes, errors of judgment etc. Even I agree with the gist of the letter (despite it’s length), in that what Sony is doing with it’s fee-based out of warranty repair service is probably the best thing they can do given the circumstances.

I can only hope that the Beeb and Anne do a dismal job in their witchhunt. Indeed, I love the BBC, but I just don’t see the point in this sort of scaremongering.

Oh god. Mrs Robinson said “Game Over” as an attempt at humour. I’m more impressed by the guy who claims to cure cancer with his hands…

[Via gamesindustry.biz]

Sony have now announced something that has been speculated for some time now: A Slimmer PlayStation 3. They have reduced weight, volume and power by a third and also rebranded the name so it’s no longer completely typed in upper case…

The US, Europe, Asia and PAL countries will get this 120GB version on September 1st, whereas Japan will get it on the 3rd. It’ll go for $299, 299 Euro or 29,980 Yen, depending on where you are in the world. The current 80GB PS3 will be dropped to that price now, with the 160GB version now going for $399

The system software will be 3.00 on release of the slimmer version (existing PS3 owners can upgrade from Sept 1st as well via their console). Oddly the “Install Other OS” feature will be removed, which will upset… barely anyone in fact.
As for the PlayStation 3 name change, I’m not kidding. They’re really changing PLAYSTATION 3 to PlayStation 3 to unify the branding across the console range.

After the jump: The Press Release in full and a collection of images showing that it now looks less like a “low fat grilling machine”…

[via Gametactics]

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Sony have now redesigned the PSP (Now called the PSP go) to make it hip and trendy again (at least, to compete against a legion of phones that play games, and of course the new Ninendo DSi), with a large sliding screen.

Officially unveilled at E3, the traditionally large screen slides up to reveal the controls stowed underneath. This is somewhat cool. In Sony’s wisdom, they’ve also removed the UMD slot, meaning that you can only play games you have stored on it’s 16 Gig drive. It also has bluetooth and wifi as expected and a few other small things, but the pricetag is now a whopping $249. Then again, it’s a small price for the coolness of a sliding screen…

The official press release is after the jump…

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