Jay G.

Which might make sense, but Sony doesn't have a UHD Blu-ray player.

Coral

I never paid attention, but I assumed Sony had a player all this time.

No stand-alone UHD player and not adding one in their next console - it's obvious Sony doesn't have much faith in the format. If we had actual UHD-BD disc sales numbers, maybe we'd understand Sony's reasoning.

Adam Tyner

They showcased one at IFA last week. They didn't specify a release date other than that it'll be out this fiscal year (which could put it into early 2017). We'll hear more at CEDIA next week.

Right. Which is why Sony's released more Ultra HD Blu-ray discs than anyone.

One, we do have actual UHD BD sales numbers, at least as of a couple months ago.

Two, that's a ridiculous argument to make. UHD BD has been on the market for six months. The decisions Sony would have to make about support in the console or putting a standalone player into development would've had to have been made waaaaaaaaaaaay before any media sales numbers were in (and even before there was any media to sell!). I'm sure sales expectations were taken into account, but actual sales...nah.

You do recall that Sony's first Blu-ray player didn't arrive until Blu-ray had been on the market for six months, right? Blu-ray launched in June, and Sony's first standalone didn't hit stores until December. Yes, their first UHD BD player is lagging even further behind, but would you have said in 2006 that Sony must have no confidence in Blu-ray because they didn't have a standalone player out at/near launch? Heck, Blu-ray was on the market for five months before the PS3 came out, meaning that the format people think of as being Sony's didn't have a Sony player for months and months.

JoeyOhhhh

I was hoping the new PS4 would have it, since I am in the market for a 4K player, and it would knock out have to buy a device to stream 4k, playback discs and already have a PS4.

Oh well, looks like I might be headed for the XBOX

fumanstan

I'm not sure if that's really accurate, as far as I've seen while taking losses on hardware was a thing for both Sony/Microsoft last year, that hasn't been the case this generation. And Nintendo has always made money on hardware as far as I know.

PhantomStranger

It looks like the game companies sell the hardware upon launch at a loss, only to break-even as expenses come down on the silicon and other parts. How you view if it's a loss probably lies in how one amortizes the fixed development costs.

Adam Tyner

That really changed this past generation. These companies are no longer willing to subsidize a console at a staggering loss and hope that years down the road that they're finally in the black. At least in terms of straight-up production costs (not counting R&D and such), Microsoft has said that they aimed for the Xbox One to break-even on day one or maybe have some razor-thin margins. Sony said the PS4 would be profitable if someone bought one game and subscribed to PS+. Nintendo said the Wii U would be profitable once someone bought one game. This is also why the technology in these consoles isn't nearly as high-end as previous systems were back in their heydeys.

arbogast777

"The head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Andrew House, has claimed there is not enough consumer interest in 4K UHD discs to support the format on the new PlayStation 4 Pro.

'Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend in video towards streaming,' he said. "

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/08/playstation-boss-andrew-house-ps4-pro-our-approach-isnt-reactive-this-time-around

Doctorossi

Ladies and gentlemen, the self-fulfilling prophecy.

mattysemo247

Well, he's not entirely wrong. Didn't someone already point to an article that said this was the first year that digital media sales were higher than physical media sales?

Coral

Well there you have it. Sony doesn't have enough confidence in the format to be anything more than a niche... and they're putting their money (or NOT putting their money) with their mouth is.

Adam Tyner

Sony Interactive Entertainment is not the home video division nor the division releasing standalone UHD BD players. Again, Sony has at least one standalone player on the way and is the studio most aggressively supporting the format in terms of software.

It's not as if the guy's going to say "oh, shit! We made a mistake by leaving out an Ultra HD Blu-ray player!" either. At this stage, it's not as if they can do anything about it. I mean, I don't think the PS4 Pro will suffer significantly in terms of sales because of it, so it doesn't really matter either way, but there's no chance the guy who leads the PlayStation group would say anything negative about the new model leading up to its launch. Of course he's going to minimize it.

I can understand having no interest in Ultra HD Blu-ray, but I sincerely cannot relate to your ire at its very existence.

Jay G.

You left out the second part of that quote:
This seems to suggest they based their decision off PS4 usage data, which is really flawed reasoning.

For one, it's conflating all PS4 users with those with 4K TVs, as if their behavior would be the same. However, those with 4K TVs are currently a premium niche that may have different behaviors than the majority of PS4 users. The PS4 Pro is supposed to explicit cater to these users, and they want the best video quality, so UHD Blu-ray may appeal to them more than general Blu-ray appeals to most users.

For another, this analysis is limited to what people watch on their PS4. Those with 4K TVs may be watching a lot of 4K content on other devices that Sony can't track the usage of. Standalone UHD Blu-ray players may be in strong demand for those with 4K TVs, but Sony wouldn't now that from the PS4 usage data.

Finally, there's a difference between amount of usage and perceived utility. I probably stream more HD content then I do view Blu-rays, but I find having a Blu-ray player built into my Xbox One incredibly convenient for when I want to watch them. Needing a separate player for just video content would reduce the perceived utility of the console for me.

Doctorossi

Excellent points, all!

Alan Smithee

I haven't had confidence in Sony in general for quite a while. (Only things I have from them are pro-model Beta and 8mm VCRs, and a Playstation 2 which I hardly use.) But at least they haven't dropped 3D from all of their TVs like some other manufacturers have.

bruceames

That's only if you considering Netflix streaming revenue as "sales". A la carte streaming is really a bogus "home video" category because it's more like a premium cable channel and it's effect is mainly on cable/sat and physical rentals (which is almost dead except for Redbox, which is now in double digit decline)

If you compare sell-thru (purchase to own) then digital is about 27% of the pie and physical sell thru the other 73%.

fujishig

I'm pretty sure Sony isn't selling systems at a huge loss (well maybe after R&D costs) because otherwise they wouldn't be so eager to put out an incremental upgrade.

I don't use my PS4 for Blu-Ray playback because they still don't have workable Harmony codes, I don't want to leave a controller (with that dumb light) on to control playback, and my PS3 is just fine as a Blu-Ray player.

fumanstan

Yeah, I use my XBox One for Blu-ray playback (replacing a PS3) because of stuff like the Harmony support. Heck, Sony even took awhile to put out a media remote for the PS4, so hopefully they're not looking at their own skewed internal data and overlooking these things.

PhantomStranger

Many think this points to Sony selling some kind of 4K streaming video service to PSN subscribers down the road. Which is why they left UHD off.

big e

Has it been confirmed the disc drive is not a UHD drive? After the news broke, Bill Hunt made a comment that UHD BD playback could possibly be enabled via a firmware update, which kinda confused me.

Adam Tyner

Yes.

From Andrew House, the guy who heads up all things PlayStation:

The official PlayStation blog:

Alan Smithee

Guess there's always the PS5. I wouldn't want to watch movies on my game system anyways. (Though if the CED videodisc player add-on for the ColecoVision had actually made it out, people would have been doing that a lot sooner! )

jjcool

Wasn't it the PS3 that contributed a lot to blue ray winning the format war, and was the top selling blue ray player? Bottom line is that a game system can make a new format that is struggling. It seems like the Sony Gaming division has no faith in UHD as a format.

Adam Tyner

Maybe. Maybe not. We might never know for sure.

The only way Sony Interactive would directly stand to benefit from the inclusion of UHD BD is if it pushed consumers who otherwise wouldn't have bought the system over the fence. The list begins and ends there.

Blu-ray in the PS3 isn't entirely apples to apples since PS3 games were on BD media too. Blu-ray served a purpose beyond just watching movies. The PS4 Plus can't use UHD BD media for games because they have to be playable on the vanilla PS4 too, and increased capacity doesn't mean much for games where you'll inevitably have to download a ton of patches and stuff on day one anyway. Games don't read from the disc except the initial install these days, unlike the PS3 era.

Personally, my suspicion is that the new GPU in the PS4 Pro pushed the price tag as far as Sony was willing to go. They could've included UHD BD, but the only way to support that feature would've required upping the price tag or taking a loss (deeper loss?). Sony decided to prioritize gaming features with the budget they had. Maybe we should've seen this coming, given that the media features on the PS4 overall are a steep step down from the PS3. There's not even a first party remote this generation! Plus Sony has their own UHD download service, and this makes it easier to lock people into that ecosystem.

It's true that Andrew House said that UHD BD didn't matter for the PS4 Pro, but does he actually mean that, or is it the same thing as Reggie Fils-Aime saying that the Wii U release of Arkham City isn't the same game that was previously released on other systems (it is), Don Mattrick arguing that the Xbox One's always online DRM was great for consumers (it wasn't), or Yusuf Mehdi saying that the Kinect would always be integral to the Xbox One even after it was no longer bundled with the system (ha ha, nope)? Of course they're going to paint their companies' decisions in the best possible light. "Come to think of it, we really should've added support for Ultra HD Blu-ray. Oh well! Too late now. Buy the PS4 Pro, coming November 10th!" That's not a thing that would ever happen.

I don't think the PS4 Pro will suffer considerably for the lack of UHD BD playback, although I do think it's dumb for a device pitched as a premium product where the marketing is 4K 4K 4K 4K 4K to not actually be able to play the highest quality source of UHD media available.

fujishig

I'm wondering why they didn't test this out with a slightly higher priced model with UHD. I'm really not for creating new SKUs, but because it doesn't have much to do with gaming it wouldn't splinter the market or make it harder for devs, it's just an added feature that's a lot more elegant than a 360-like add on. But I suspect that would have cannibalized sales of their standalone.