Mostly Confirmed: Sony producing new PS3 Slim.

Mostly Confirmed: Microsoft pee’s pants a little, and responds by making the Xbox 360 Elite a little bit smaller a whole butt-load cheaper.

Anyways, some of you might remember the rumors of a PS3 Slim floating around our dear interwebs around the end of May, via an Arstechnica Mole. Then again in early July with Sony reportedly signing manufacturing agreements with both Foxconn and Pegatron. There is no mention of a price change there, so…whatevs. It’s a smaller PS3.

So, the Xbox 360 Elite will replace the Pro at the end of August, with a price drop to $299. This is pretty much a brilliant move by Microsoft, since the biggest shopping season of the year is LITERALLY knocking on our door. Just think, Black Friday is only 101 days away.

I personally don’t see how Sony can’t put in a price drop though. When Christmas rolls around, do you think Mom and Pops are going to spring for $299 top of the line Xbox Elite, or spend $469.99 for a PS3? HECK, for only $30 more, they could buy an Xbox Elite and an Xbox Arcade model. That’s 2 consoles for the price of one folks. Now, for extra credit, try to convince me how that’s not going to affect Sony’s Fall/Winter Sales Data.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Sony has the Blu-Ray. Sure, you don’t have to pay for every goll-danged extra thing like you do with the Xbox (wireless connectivity, online play), and the PS3’s DLC tends to be a lot cheaper too. but I really don’t think this outweighs the fact that the Xbox is now almost HALF the cost of a PS3.

These developments will definitely make the never ending debate of “PS3 vs. Xbox 360/Hardware vs. Value” more interesting.