Games & gear forum: Cross-Game Chat In New PS3

So I've been reading about all the rumors of the new PS3 Super Slim that is speculated to be announced at the Tokyo Games Show, and I was wondering if Cross-Game Chat could be supported and featured on this new model? There's rumors of the new system's price starting at $150 and if that's true it'll get a lot of sales from people without a PS3, but not necessarily from people who already own a PS3. I think it'd be a smart move by Sony to add Cross-Game Chat to the new console so it'll interest people who already own a PS3, and at the lower price, I know many people who would switch to the new model. Any thoughts? Is it possible? Thanks.

Also, I'm aware of the RAM limitations in the current PS3 models, but couldn't they just up the RAM in order to enable the feature?

... I was given this reply in Playstation Community Forums:

1) To voluntarily comply with EPA Goldstar power ratings for Game consoles now or within two years forced to do it by California power regulations for game consoles, a MASSIVE redesign of the PS3 NOT using Cell but multiple more modern PPU+ SPU multiprocessor architecture cpu packages and modern GPU and the modern support chips needed by CPU and GPU is needed. Power at the XMB needs to drop from 61 watts to 35 watts. This hardware is so different that Software emulation will be required.

It will probably have a AMD A6 APU core with X86 processors replaced by the CPU packages mentioned in a 2010 Sony patent: two 1PPU3SPU CPU packages. It will probably have 1 gig of unified memory.

2) Since X game chat is a OS feature provided by the XMB OS and running in the extra memory provided for emulation overhead it will not break PS3 games side compatibility.

3) From the previous leaks that Cross Game Chat would be a Playstation Plus feature, it's already fragmenting the PS3 userbase. X Game chat would only be available between the newer PS3 4K and Vita and each other.

4) If the Digitimes PS4 2012 rumor is a more modern hardware version of a PS3 that was recognized as not being PS3 hardware, (No separate Cell-RSX) it has a Kinect like interface and Sony expects to sell 20 million the first year (PS3 4K chassis), issues of not enough users with a X game Chat PS3 will be addressed very soon.

It would be difficult to shrink cell and economically impossible to put the RSX designed for bulk process Silicon on SOI with PPU and SPU CPUs. Microsoft and IBM had similar issues with the Xbox 360S SoC and chose to use three modern 2010 PPUs, a custom 2010 AMD GPU designed for SOI and put them on one SOI wafer @ 45nm. A redesigned Xbox 360 is coming also and may be using essentially the same AMD A6 Core. Suggested by microsoft-sony.com, a PS3 AMD A6 APU could emulate either PS3 or Xbox 360.

16 gig SSD flash memory on the motherboard or in the SoC package will be in the PS4 and Xbox 720 also. It should allow OS and Cache in the 4 gig reserved (FCC listing says 16 gig and leaks have the size 12 gigs) that will speedup snapshot boot and using the webkit stack gameside.