Blu Ray Drive Will Cost $100 Per PlayStation 3

fembots writes "The Inquirer is running an article detailing how Blu-Ray drives for the PlayStation 3 will cost Sony a small fortune. It turns out that at the release of the console in the first half of 2006, Sony will have to pay more than $100 per drive which will dramatically increase the unit cost of the PS3."

Comments

shortly following....

[GenKreton]

This shortly following the announcement of additional DRM in blu-ray. Maybe Sony has finally made a fatal mis-step. Obviously they haven't learned from history yet.

I've seen this article... but

[mcc]

Where are they getting this from?

The Inquirer doesn't say where they got this number from... they don't have a source... it just seems to have come out of nowhere. Do they have a source they just forgot to cite? Or are they just running rumors without checking them?

This is the same number ($100) the Merill Lynch analyst report about the manufacturing costs of the PS3 (which slashdot itself has reported on at least once in the last few months) gave. I have the same doubts about it that I had then; it isn't from an "official" source (or in this case... any source at all), and I wonder if that $100 represents real per-unit costs or things that ought to be considered sunk costs, things that are just a natural byproduct of getting blu-ray production lines up and running. The reason this distinction matters is because Sony is going to have to be paying the second category of costs anyway, since for whatever reason they're going to be building blu-ray drives for sale anyway... so bundling those costs into the per-unit costs of the PS3 doesn't make all that much sense.

What's wrong with DVD anyway?

[zbuffered]

Can they seriously not fit all their games' data in a Dual-layered DVD?

This might be a deal-breaker for me. If I can interface my PS3 with, say, my PC or share it out to the network to use the Blu-Ray drive with non-gaming discs, then it's useful new technology and adopting it with the PS3 may end up cost-effective in the long run. Otherwise, this is Sony using new tech for... What purpose, exactly? Copy protection? Gee, thanks.

Odd...

[squidsoup]

Do Sony really expect a lot of people to be able to afford these? Given the depressed state of the US economy, I can't see people snapping these up.

I suspect the Nintendo revolution will be reasonably priced, and I'll most likely buy one of those instead.

I own a ps2, but really can't justify spending that much on a console.

Re:An expensive addition...

[Osty]

when the ps3/xbox360/revolution come out soon, you can buy one. but when you buy one, even though you paid for the graphics chip, the sound chip, the cpu, the vector/simd processors, the storage units; these are all off-limits to you, THE OWNER.

(The rest is just blah blah blah)

News flash: The act of modifying a console has never been found illegal. While companies have tried (Sony in Australia, everybody going after Lik Sang, etc), the only cases that ever hold up are those that also involve piracy. Thus, you certainly can hack your Xbox36/PS3/Revolution to your heart's content, so long as you're not doing anything otherwise illegal (using it to pirate movies and games, accessing services that otherwise bar modified consoles like Xbox Live, etc).

There's certainly a grey area around console modification due to the DMCA, but that's about circumventing a copy protection device. If you're modifying your console to run linux, or to play homebrew games, you can argue that you're not breaking the DMCA. If you were to come under fire, which is doubtful as companies like Sony or Microsoft really only target the egregious offenders (people modifying Xboxes and then selling them with pirated games already on the hard drive for example), any competent lawyer should be able to do the right thing so long as there's no evidence of piracy (you mention you don't want to pirate games, so don't fall to that temptation once you do modify your console).

In short, take off the tinfoil hat and realize that there's no way they can stop you from poking around in the internals of your console in the privacy of your own home. You may lose certain services (voided warranty, banned from online play), but in terms of the hardware itself you can do whatever you please.

Or you could buy it for the GAMES, you know

[Moraelin]

You know, no offense, I find the "buy Nintendo because it's priced reasonably" argument to be as bogus as "buy an XBox because it has a GF3" in it. We're not talking a lawnmower or a washing machine or whatever else that is fully self-contained and does something all by itself. We're talking a game console, which has one single use: to play games.

So here's a crazy idea: I'll buy a console for what games it has, not for the theoretical gigapixels per second (I don't play directly with the shader pipelines, I play with games that use those), nor because it's the cheapest (even something that costs only $100 is still just a wasted $100 if it doesn't also have games that interest me.)

_If_ the Revolution will have any games that interest me, sure, I'll buy one. But if not, not.

_If_ Sony's consoles again are the ones with 90% of the story driven RPGs, I'll go buy a Sony console again.

So far, I don't even like Nintendo's kinds of games, which were really the only ones that were exclusive to the N64 or GCN. Now I won't call them "bad" games or "kiddie" games, but they're just not in the genres I like. I know others like them. More power to them as far as I'm concerned. But I don't.

So unless Nintendo hires a new designer sometime soon, _I_ just can't see myself buying a Revolution, no matter at what price. On the other, hand, being a very happy and entertained owner of both the Playstation and PS2, I can easily see myself biting the bullet and forking over $500 for a PS3.

But again, I'll wait and see what games are available for them, and _then_ decide whether I buy either.