Interesting article in the April 06 edition of Widescreen Review which questions whether or not the PS3 will come with a Blu-Ray player... or have two versions. One version with a standard DVD player w/optional BR-add-on-drive and another version with a built in BR player to be more in line with the estimated $900 production cost.

This would allow Sony to be competitive with the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution while not taking the estimated $2 billion dollar loss on hardware if they include the BR player at $499.

This conjecture is based on some surveys that Sony has recently done which included this question:

In other words, they may be trying to see if people would be interested in a PS3 at half the price with a plain old DVD player in it.

They really are in a bad situation trying to be competitive in the gaming console market and the HD media market with both markets having different demands...

This has the Sony bomb smell all over it. Trojan horse, indeed.

If they don't include Blue Ray, and the rumored delays of Blue Ray in general are true, it may be the death knell for the format.

It has to be included. Sony has already said that all games will come on Blu-Ray discs. This is done mostly for piracy (Sony's biggest issue with their gaming arm). Sony will delay the PS3 another 3 years to get Blu-Ray in it rather than put a DVD drive in the machine.

Sony will not do it this way. Blu Ray winning is a must for Sony and PS3 is the Trojan Horse to get it in homes everywhere. PS3 is already a loss leader with Sony making money on software so why not include movie playback as well and make more money on Blu Ray movie software. Losses on PS3 hardware are a non issue for Sony. They are looking to beat Toshiba on the movie front and Microsoft on the gaming front and will spare no expense to do it.

Looks like you can pre-order a PS3 from buy-ps3.com.

It is on pre-order for 399.99 pounds ($695).

And if they delay the machine 3 more years, then the format will be deader than a doornail.

Their trojan horse is delayed until November, correct? That's a long wait to make sure it's in every household. And up until that point, consumers will have to spend at least $1000 to watch BR movies. That can't be a good thing.

Sony does not have the financial resources to out last MS taking a loss on each system. I agree, if they change direction and offer a DVD version of PS3, then BR is DOA. Perhaps even Sony is hedging their bets.

Although you may be correct about the games being based on Blu-Ray discs, that doesn't mean every console will come with the ability to play Blu-Ray movie discs out of the box. Sony may decide to offer "core" and "premium" versions of the console, one that can play Blu-Ray movies and one that can't.

Even though it's a valid strategy for videogame manufacturers to take a loss on their consoles that they plan to make up with software sales, Sony is a business and can only take so much of a loss. The company is simply not in a strong enough financial position to take the billions of dollars of loss in console sales that analysts are estimating. They're either going to have to cut back on the console's features or charge a lot more for it than people are expecting.

That article was written before the press conference during which Ken Kutaragi confirmed that the PS3 would be a Blu-ray movie player.

if it doesn't come with BR, I'm going to wait.

Would this be the same company that up until a few weeks ago was still insistent that the PS3 would ship in the spring?

Bingo.

What Sony says and what Sony does are usually two entirely different things.

I take everything that Sony says with a huge grain of salt.

So they delay the PS3 launch to ensure Blu-ray capability only to drop BD as a feature.

What Toshiba says and what Toshiba does are usually two entirely different things.

I take everything that Toshiba says with a huge grain of salt.

:sighs:

Cut it out.

While I can buy the idea that it would be a heavy blow to BR, it would be smart for the PS3 in general. Sony wants a PS3 to have BR for only two reasons....piracy (which won't really help since it will be cracked and there will be BR burners in computers) and to help launch Blue Ray as a movie medium. The idea of the extra storage doesn't really matter for video games. As it is, the biggest games won't take up the entire space of a dvd (unless the developers are just lazy). Microsoft understands that and is only going to have the HD-DVD drive as an add on to be able to "compete" with the marketing of BR. Sony would be at a huge disadvantage if the PS3 comes out at $799 or above. That would nearly kill it by itself.

So in doing this, they can keep a competitive price with X360 and still offer a super duper BR version for the hard core gamer.....actually, just the gamer with a lot of money.

BUT....in this world, a delay to November is an eternity. As such, they might as well just tell us it is delayed indefinately. You can't plan something that hasn't even started having the guts built yet that well. I would not be surprised to see another delay.

But hey...we'll have the movies out.

This discussion has been brought up before, and there are developers out there who are already going beyond the capacity of DVD. Even Team Ninja (the guys who made the DOA series and Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox) has mentioned that they need more storage than DVD can provide.

Yeah, but those complaints typically seemed to come from developers who use a lot of pre-rendered videos. That's more of a concern for Japanese developers like Team Ninja than it is for most. I would imagine it could keep Japanese-style RPGs off the 360, though.

A number of the Xbox 360 launch titles (like Condemned, Madden '06, and NBA '06) used less than half of the DVD's capacity.

Good points. If you do a lot of non game stuff in a game, you could eat it up. Just because I don't have lots of time to play, I hate what Final Fantasy has become, but I can see that it is probably huge for Japan.

An interesting thing about piracy. Nintendo did a great job of getting rid of it with the gamecube. They made a medium that has no applications elsewhere, but still got rid of the carts. I don't believe Sony truly believes that they can defeat piracy by making a medium for which there will also be burners available.

There's a method of playing Gamecube games without buying them so saying Nintendo got rid of piracy isn't completely true.

Sony maybe have a software ready for it's Blu Ray Games.If you put a non original or copied game and each time you connect to the net,it will try to check the serial number,just like Microsoft and they would detect it if it's not registered.That could be a way,but I may be wrong.

They can always put games on multiple discs if the need is there, so it's really a non issue.


As for the PS3...

I'm torn on wanting BR in the PS3 and it all boils down to price. If the PS3 is $499 and includes BR then I'm fine with it. I look at it as getting a BR player for an extra $100 over the 360.

If it's over $499, Sony is going to make their customer base pay out the ass to trojan horse a format into their homes. Especially considering that 90% of people who buy one won't have a HDTV or give a crap about BR movies anyways.

But we hate that, so they don't want to do that.

If it's over $499, it isn't a trojan horse.

From a radio interview with the VP of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe: