Sony has confirmed over night at GamesCom that there is indeed a secret PS3 Slim in development and it will be hitting a store near you in the first week of September.

The PS3 slim is 32% smaller, 36% lighter, it consumes 34% less power and the real good news is that it’s about 30% cheaper as well.

Starting from today the PS3’s you see in the shop should now be priced at $299 or R2408 in a direct conversion. Or if we are converting from the new European price tag of EUR299 then we can expect to pay R3400.

Which would still work out to be around a R1000 price cut which is nothing to sniff at.

The new PS3 Slim has a 120Gb HDD and will arrive in the beginning of September at that same price point.

For a full boring list of specs click through.

PlayStation®3 (CECH-2000A)

Product name: PlayStation®3

Product code: CECH-2000A (Charcoal Black)

CPU: Cell Broadband Engine™

GPU: RSX®

Audio output: LPCM 7.1ch, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC.

Memory: 256MB XDR Main RAM, 256MB GDDR3 VRAM

Hard disk: 2.5” Serial ATA 120GB *1

Inputs/Outputs*2: Hi-Speed USB (USB 2.0)

Networking: Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) × 1 – IEEE 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth® 2.0 (EDR)

Controller: Wireless Controller （Bluetooth®）

AV output: Resolution 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i (for PAL 576p, 576i)

HDMI OUT connector*3: 1

AV MULTI OUT connector: 1

Digital out (optical) connector: 1

BD／DVD／CD drive (read only): Maximum read rate
BD × 2 (BD-ROM)
DVD × 8 (DVD-ROM)
CD × 24 (CD-ROM)

Power: AC 220 – 240, 50/60Hz*4

Power consumption: Approx. 250W

External dimensions: (excluding maximum projecting part )
Approx. 290 × 65 × 290 mm (width × height × length)

Mass: Approx. 3.2kg

Included *5: PlayStation®3 system × 1
Wireless Controller (DUALSHOCK®3) × 1
AC power cord × 1
AV cable × 1
USB cable × 1

*1 Hard disk capacity calculated using base 10 mathematics (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes). System software versions 1.10 and later calculate capacity using binary mathematics (1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes), which will display lower capacity and free space. A portion of hard disk capacity is reserved for system administration, which varies depending upon system software version, and is not available for use.

*2 Usability of all connected devices is not guaranteed.

*3 "Deep Colour" and "x.v.Colour (xvYCC)" defined by HDMI ver.1.3a are supported.

*4 Power changes depending on countries or regions.

*5 For certain regions, Euro-AV cable will be included

[Thanks Destructoid for the fact list]