In a surprise to no one, the PS3 Slim was officially announced at Sony’s GamesCom 2009 presser. What came as a bit more of a surprise (to me, at least) was the announcement that it was being released in conjunction with a $100 price cut. That’s right, Sony is giving us a smaller, more efficient console for less money.

The PS3 Slim will be available starting the first week of September, so we won’t be waiting long. It will be 33 percent smaller than the current PS3 model, and 36 percent lighter. It will pack a 120 GB hard drive, and retail for $299. Almost sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Wondering how they managed to knock a whole $100 off the price tag? Yeah, so am I, especially after what Sony’s CEO said about a month ago concerning a price cut. Speaking to Reuters, Howard Stringer flatly stated: “I would lose money on every PlayStation I make – how’s that for logic.”

Clearly, then, Sony has managed to reduce manufacturing costs with the PS3 Slim. Obviously a small console requires less raw material to produce, but there’s more to it than that. Speaking to Kotaku, SCEA’s Director of Hardware Marketing, John Koller, revealed three key changes in the PS3 Slim’s design. First, the Slim’s Cell processor has been reduced from 65 nanometers to 45. A new cooling system has been implemented (which, presumably, won’t be as heavy-duty has the one in place for the current models.) Last, the Slim features a new power draw. While Koller stated that these changes reduced the manufacturing costs of the system, he would not reveal whether or not Sony would still lose money in the process. Personally, I’m going to take his lack of comment as a “sadly, yes.”

Koller also frankly stated that the PS3 Slim would not feature backwards compatibility, describing it as “off the table.” Damn. Aside from that, the PS3 Slim will be short one other feature (though I doubt people will miss it nearly as much): the ability to install a different Operating System, such as Linux. Somewhere, approximately forty-seven nerds are sobbing.

While Firmware Version 3.0 will be released on September 1st, early adopters of the Slim will have to download it themselves for whatever reason, as it won’t be pre-installed. For those interested in learning more about 3.0, check out this video. I generally don’t pay much attention to these things, but 3.0 actually looks pretty sweet. I’d recommend giving the video a look.

I don’t even own one yet, but I’m very impressed with the PS3 Slim thus far. Sony is giving us all nearly the features and all the power that the current model has at a lower price. The fact that it’s in a smaller, more attractive casing just sweetens the deal. And in a sense, this redesign represents Sony’s one last burst of speed in the race towards… not being in last place. Will it be enough to push them past the Xbox 360? Frankly I’m not so sure, but it gives them a fighting chance.