I'm surprised noone has mentioned this yet...

Does this mean that they are STILL able to change the hardware specs? Doesn't that also mean they haven't started making them yet?

I'm wondering if they were already changed, and they chose to simply make the announcement as a PR stunt.

They are already producing them. You think the 20 test units they have at TGS were crafted out of thin air?

That would be awesome!!!

This really does manke me wonder just how long they have been in production. I for one dont buy that they held onto this information and decided to use it as a PR stunt later down the road especially considering how much bad press Sony and the PS3 have been getting latly. IMO they would have come out with this asap to help with some positive press and could have helped stop the slide in stock prices as good news usually does.

Again I just find it hard to belive that they just sat back and listened to all of the bad press, and there was a ton of it, and kept thi piece of good news in thier pocket for release at a later date.

Regardless this has no impact on me and the PS3. I have already decided to not get one until they drop below 200 bucks which is probably a good 3-4 years away. By that time there will be a wealth of games to pick up for super cheap. With exclusivity of titles basically a thing of the past, except of course in house studios, the need for having each game machine is gone for me. The titles that were a must have for me like Grand Theft Auto are multiple platform now and with me lovin my 360 as much as I do, I am all set for now. They priced themselves right out of my wishlist a long time ago.

As consumers the only vote we have is with our wallet and I am casting my serious disapproval of Sony and the way they have screwed everything up latly with my wallt and just saying no.

PS...

I agree with you. The added inclusion of HDMI 1.3 on the cheaper units is going to cost them more as well but they should have done it from the getgo.

The price drop in Japan just makes no sense to me. Even at 500 and 600 these things were selling out over there without any problem. They shouldn't drop the price until they see the demand die down. Now they just lost another $100 per unit.

Yeah the die hard gamers would without a doubt buy one even at those prices but Sony conducted studies and surveys regarding wether people planned on buying one at those prices and the feedback they were getting back was that they were going to lose a big chunk of business with the unit priced that high. They didn't just make this kind of move for no reason. They realized that they were literally helping Nintendo gain ground on them in Japan by having a price point this high. In the end they obviously felt it was more important to lower the price and thus lose more money initially then it was to have those people not buy one at all.

PS..

But they could have just waited for January to drop the price. Why lose an additional $100 on their holiday stock that was going to sell anyway at the higher price??? If we were talking about moving over 1 million units in a month then this would be an issue, but moving less than 100K is going to be a piece of cake in Japan. Even the Japanese analysts can't figure this one out.

Its a very strange move, but I think it has a little bit to do with them trying to bolster the BD movie format and a lot to do with sales charts like this.

Japanese hardware sales - Sept 11 - 17
September 22nd, 2006

1. DSL - 134,885
2. PS2 - 34,189
3. PSP - 26,995
4. GBASP - 2,330
5. GBM - 1,244
6. 360 - 928
7. NGC - 630
8. NDS - 478
9. GBA - 27
10. XBX - 7

The DS has beaten Sony like a drum in Japan for months on end. Hardware and software sales. I think Sony may be worried that the Wii might have a slight chance of doing the same. They won't have many 20GB PS3s for launch, but I bet they really focus supplies on Japan as soon as possible. They don't want Nintendo having the same kind of success with the Wii.

Sony doesn't need the PS3 to just win, they need it to destroy Nintendo and MS the same way the PS2 did.

That make sense but they still should wait until they see what happens with the first shipments. BTW, I was not aware of the actual sales numbers. As many of us speculated Sony has got themselves in a pickle via their all in one solution to the PS3/Blu-Ray format. They underestimated Nintendo's new system and gave MS too much lead time in the States and UK.

There is a really good article that just went up today on videobusiness.com which talks about this situation. Sony can drop PS3 prices in Japan because the majority of the market is set-top recordable boxes. Since the PS3 is not a recordable unit the other CE companies can focus on recordable Blu-Ray there with disregard to the PS3 price. Sony is cautious to drop prices in the US because this is more of a ROM market and the CE companies working with Sony on Blu-Ray do not want to compete with a lower cost PS3.

I have a feeling Toshiba knows that between their current Hd players and the MS add-on they will have built enough market share for themselves to bump the price on their 2nd gen hardware up. This will hopefully encourage other CE companies to consider supporting HDdvd.

I'm happy with the upscaling on my 360.

The last thing Toshiba wants to do is raise the price of the HD-DVD players. I just dont understand this line of thinking at all. HD-DVD has been extremely lucky that Sony has stumbled as badly as they did. Had Sony come out of the gate swinging and been as successful as HD-DVD has been it could have been very difficult for HD-DVD to survive. Thats not how things have played out however and Toshiba needs to continue to keep the ball in thier court by continuing to lower the prices of HD-DVD players not raising them. The peole that are on the fence about going next gen DVD, and there are alot, will not be convinced to jump on board with rising prices of players. Aain I just dont see where this line of thinking comes from and I think raising player costs would be the worst thing that Toshiba could do right now to switch momentum over to Sony.

PS..

They've already bumped the price on the XA2 by $300. The A2 will remain the same price, but will have less some less features.

Well, like SM just posted they are in fact raising the prices of the Gen 2 players, or dropping features. By January they would have built a pretty sizable number of players in homes and want to encourage other CE companies to support their format. The major CE companies have made it pretty clear they won't chase after $500 players from Toshiba. On the flip side Toshiba needs to start making some money back on hardware at some point.

Can someone point me to an any evidence that PS3 production has started? Last I heard even last week there were delays.

The last I heard they were supposed to start production at the end of this month. They had 30 PS3's at TGS, but I don't think that come off a fully running production line.

Usually when production starts there would be articles about it, but that hasn't happened yet.

This is precisely the last info I heard. In fact, when the PS3s start rolling off the line, it will be a bigger story than it usually would be.

Also this price drop in Japan isn't as big a deal for this year because if reports are correct, Japan's release is open price meaning that retailers have no MSRP to follow, and can charge whatever they want.

I've talked to a couple of people and without going into exactly what they told me, think about the situation.

If, say, 2 or 3 other manufacturers who are currently on the BD side wanted to start releasing HD DVD player because they've gotten the shaft from BD, why would they do so knowing that Toshiba would leave them in the dust as well with the $500 price point? So what happens? The 1st gen people luck out and Toshiba pushes up that 2nd player to match what the other hardware manufacturers need/want to feel comfortable about getting into the game.

That makes sense. But it seems to defy the logic of why anyone would produce a BD player when they will be competing with subsidized PS3s.....unless the PS3 completely sucks as a player (quite possible) but that doesn't do Sony any good once the numbers come out and it is obvious that people who buy PS3s don't buy movies.

Then BD actually has to compete on a level playing field with HD-DVD in the eyes of the studios, though. Even though I have said that I would support BD if they became equal to HD-DVD, it sure feels like they are getting set to implode.

My honest wish....that someone could get through to FOX. They seem like the biggest BD fanboy of them all, and as I understand it, it is based on the security of the BD compared to the "shaft" they feel they got with Toshiba on the DVD. Someone needs to ask them if they feel they made a financial mistake ever getting into DVD, and then say, "then what the hell's the problem." Secondly, someone needs to hurry up and hack the BD security just so that FOX can see that if you want to worry about security in this day and age, you won't get into any medium.

Yep, I was alluding to that point.

You left one thing out as well. By allowing consumers to know ahead of time that they are dropping features on the cheaper G2 player, they just ensured their entire stock of HD-A1s sell out. Toshiba is a smart cookie.

That's really interesting. Do the retailers have to report what was sold at what price to Sony?

Only the 60GB version is open pricing. The 20GB version is the price they announced at TGS. Japan only.

The problem is, Fox isn't complaining about the money they're making. They're complaining about the money they think they should have made if piracy weren't an issue. They're counting eggs that never hatched and saying that the revenue they would have made (by doing various projections that are probably bullshit) was lost to them thanks to Toshiba.

And Warner.

No one has mentioned this but there was a report that the split between 60/20GB models was 80/20. Since most of them would have the HDMI port to begin with it should be no big deal to just include it on the 20GB model. Everything else the 60GB model has are just addons to the main system board. So one can assume they are just using one system board from now on as opposed to two different ones before. Of course they could have just been planning this all along for all we know.