PS3 To Use Blu-Ray Technology

Daetrin writes "GameSpot has reported an announcement by Sony that the PlayStation 3 will use Blu-Ray technology, a next-generation optical disc format which 'can hold 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on the dual-layer discs', as many people have been speculating. What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games. However, they indicated that they will reveal more details about the PlayStation 3 at a premiere in Japan on March 31st next year. (And, if nothing else, there will certainly be plenty of rumors before then.)"

Comments

DVD players are so cheap

[duckpoopy]

Does it really matter if it will play dvd movies?If you can afford a $300+ console, you can afford a $50- dvd player.

Re:DVD players are so cheap

[techiemac]

Ahh... but there is something that needs to be considered here. The "internal justification" aspect of marketing. I assume (and it may be a bad assumption) that most of the PS2s & XBoxen that are out there are not used for any sort of DVD playback even though they have that feature.

But when it comes to either justifying the price to your spouse, signifigant other, parents, self, dog, goldfish, etc, it helps to be able to say "Well I'm not just using it for games... We can use it as our DVD player as well"
It tends to make the $300 price tag hurt a little less. So while the feature will likely never be used, it has a marketing aspect to it (plus you don't want the "other" guy to be able to one up you with features). Marketing often tends to be what sells technology, not the other way around (though it would be nice if things sold based on their technical merit).

At what cost? $$

[curtisk]

...to the consumer or is Sony just going to absorb it like most console makers do? Will this drive up the price per game? Also, since you are packing ALOT more data is the same space, wouldn't scratches and surface damage be even more crippling potentially?

Also, Sony should make sure that they don't have all the "Disc read error" problems this time through.

Re:At what cost? $$

[seinman]

"Also, since you are packing ALOT more data is the same space, wouldn't scratches and surface damage be even more crippling potentially?"

Search Google for pictures of Blu-Ray discs. They come in little plastic cartridges, much like MiniDiscs and floppies. Unless you grossly mistreat them, you won't have problems with scratching.

Is scratching even that big a problem now, on DVDs? Assuming you put them back in their cases when you're done, the things never seem to scratch. At least i've never had that problem.

Re:Who needs 50 GB in a game?!

[ackthpt]

When 640Kb should be enough for everyone? (Yeah I know I am mixing ram with disk size here, but it is a joke. Laugh)

A joke? Seems the joke is we now have HD beyond our wildest dreams (only thinkable in the realm of sci-fi, lest you be mocked) 10 years ago. ("Wow, a 340 Meg HD, that's HUGE!") Yet, we seem to only have the same stuff as back then, just with higher definition. Heck, I don't think you can install Windows XP on less than a 5 GB drive. We once ran an entire information system and had student accounts on a system with 2 x 88 MB drives. Games which were elaborate and inventive (not to mention gripping) fit in 64K, now require a CD or DVD. Yeah, it's for the 5.1 sound and the massive graphics, I know, and compilers no longer optimize for size, so even code can be large.

Just wait until everything is 3D...

An interesting question comes up...

[vudufixit]

Games are getting increasingly expensive to create. A game that could fill a Blu-Ray disc would undoubtedly require an unprecedented, possibly bank-breaking budget for the artists and programmers.

Re:Sony wouldn't...

[shirai]

You make it sound like supporting only MPEG2
is a good thing.

This reduces the quality of the video coming out of Blu Ray or MPEG4 by a factor of 3. MPEG2 is not as good at compressing video with a given bit rate. In other words, the new codecs can hold 3x the quality or content in the same amount of space.

But that is moot.

Blu Ray is planning to adopt either MPEG4, WMV(VC-9) or both in July of this year. They've agreed that using an old codec is a bad idea. See the current August 2004 issue of Widescreen magazine for details.

There is also a good interview with Microsoft on WMV. Whether you like Microsoft or not (and I'm guessing not for most), the Interview is informative.