Sony made some pretty big reveals at the CES tech showcase this year – a mixed reality headset, a first look at it Gravity MovieAnd a car that you can control with a DualSense– so it makes the superficial offerings anew PS5 Slim Color variants even more disappointing. Red, blue and silver you say?! However: Black?
Um, yes, there is also black. Sony’s significantly smaller PlayStation 5 Slim was announced in October 2023And published in November, with the promise that the sidewalls will be even more colorful. Three of them were shown at CES, as spotted by The edgeand they’re not exactly groundbreaking decisions.
Okay, let’s be somewhat sensible: They come in good red, blue and silver. Each looks like a shiny new car, rather than the awful plasticky Lego colors that consoles usually get, and is much better than the chunky PS5’s options. The official names of the colors are Volcanic Red, Cobalt Blue, and Sterling Silver, and if you ask about these names at your local store, the employees may stare at you for up to a full minute.
While the standard white PS5 Slim features a mix of glossy and matte panels, these new panels are all matte and cost $55 for the privilege. That seems like a lot of money for a purely aesthetic case, and we’ll probably see a much more interesting selection of cheaper third-party panels soon.
The bigger problem for me is that it points to Sony’s completely wrong attitude towards this hardware. Yes, of course they want to woo the posh audience, the people who just buy cod And FC2X (née FIFA) every year and wants something that doesn’t look stupid next to the TV. But at the same time the PlayStation, it’s a toy. It is for play At. Why can’t we also have the opportunity to have a little joy? A lively mix of bright colors, a kitschy floral pattern, the cover of Bat from Hell?
OK, maybe not Meat Loaf, and definitely not Wood veneer, but something that suggests Sony recognizes that people use PS5s to have fun. Or better yet, follow Microsoft’s recent excellent direction and let me pick a bunch of ridiculously contradictory panel sections to create something as hideous as my wonderful Xbox controller.
The Slim’s announcement blog said, “Additional colors will be released in the future,” but given the lifeless first-round picks, it’s hard to hold out much hope for anything more than the addition of purple, light blue, and some bloody camouflage. I mean, This is what the regular PS5 received.
