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Blu Ray Drive Will Cost $100 Per PlayStation 3

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the expensive-is-as-expensive-does dept.

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."

17 of 489 comments (clear)

  1. Cost saving idea direct from me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Replace the blue-ray drive with a 1.44meg floppy drive.

  2. An expensive addition... by SleepyHappyDoc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do you want to pay an extra $130 ($100 cost of drive plus 30% profit margin) on your new PS3 for a DRM-laden drive that can 'punish' you? No thanks.

    --
    Stasis is death. Embrace change.
    1. Re:An expensive addition... by thesymbolicfrog · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...Or, you could by an Xbox and support Microsoft. Which is worse?

    2. Re:An expensive addition... by squidsoup · · Score: 5, Informative
      Not at all. Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, has a keynote speech scheduled, during which some new information about the Revolution will most likely be revealed. The following is from the IGNcube mailbag:
      Nintendo will not be showing anything at the Tokyo Game Show 2005. This is not really surprising because the company rarely exhibits at the event, considered by many to be the Japanese equivalent of the Electronics Entertainment Expo. That being true, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata opened TGS 2003 with a keynote speech and he's set to do the same at this year's event. The subject of his speech has not yet been revealed, but it's scheduled to take place on September 16 before the show officially kicks off. In 2003, Iwata spoke vaguely about the videogame industry and the future of game consoles. In two weeks, we expect him to talk about Revolution, possibly unveiling the top-secret controller. So although the Big N won't be on the show floor with games, it should be an exciting TGS for Nintendo fans all the same. Stay tuned for more, obviously.
    3. Re:An expensive addition... by AnObfuscator · · Score: 5, Funny
      ...Or, you could by an Xbox and support Microsoft

      actually, Sony and Microsoft *loose* money each time they sell you a console. They expect to make up the loss on the game sales. Thus, if you really want to hurt Microsoft, you should buy TWO xboxen.

      --
      multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
    4. Re:An expensive addition... by Osty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:An expensive addition... by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Informative

      With Id Software (Doom, Quake) and Epic (Unreal) as well as a few other developers porting their games to Linux, linux gaming isn't non-existant, just limited. Valve is the last holdout of the big three of FPS, and they have no plans to support anything but Windows and consoles/arcades. Still, I understand Cegeda (Formerly WineX) runs Valve products decently (They actively release updates when Valve's STEAM updates cause trouble), so it is still possible to play their stuff without paying "the Microsoft tax", as you put it.

  3. shortly following.... by GenKreton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. $100? by king-manic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where did that figure come from? Sony owns the patent so it's not from licencing, unless they need gold wires/contacts through out the reader I doubt that $100 figure is accurate. It will have both an economy of scale as well a verticle intergration for this hardware, I'm more inclined to beleive 40$ of raw materials and a fudged math estimated R&D of 60$ per unit.

    --
    "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  5. Perhaps the price will not increase by iced_773 · · Score: 5, Interesting


    IIRC, Microsoft sold each XBox at a loss, and game sales made up for the loss. Is it possible that Sony will think the same way?

  6. I've seen this article... but by mcc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  7. What's wrong with DVD anyway? by zbuffered · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Synergy is your friend
    1. Re:What's wrong with DVD anyway? by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Informative

      "You said tripple the size. As I said, can you explain how bump maps could be larger?"

      I can offer a little detail. Have a peek at this image I made here. No, this is not an in-game mesh, but it's the sort of graphic that game consoles are rapidly approaching the ability to do in real time. There are a lot of photographic textures in that scene. Each texture is 2048 by 2048 in size. Here's a breakdown of the data involved:

      - Color texture. (24-bit) :: This is the color image for the surfaces. The warning sign and the "DO NOT BLOCK ENTRY" sign both use images made in Photoshop to look like that. Those vents on the back wall are also simply photographs. (I'm starting to wish I made a render of this cannon without the textures to give an idea...)

      - Bump texture (8-bit) :: This generates a 'bump' on the surface by adding an embosed looking shadow to the texture. The tiles on the floor in this image us that process.

      - Specular Texture (8-bit) :: This controls how much 'shininess' is reflected from the surface. It is hard to see in this pic a great example of this process, but it's fairly subtle in this pick. Take a look at the tiles in the floor, though. There is some roughness on the floor from the specularity image, the bump image, and the glossiness image.

      - Glossiness Texture (8-bit) :: This affects how 'big' a specular highlight is on a per-pixel level. This is great for making metal or something look 'smudged' when light hits it. The floor also uses this technique. Unfortunately, you'd have to see it animated to really get an idea of what effect it has on this scene. Basically, if the camera were to slowly truck to the right, you'd see a sort of 'shimmering' effect as the light hit the different areas of the glossiness map, causing the specular highlights to change in size. That's really the main reason I put that in there, I thought it'd make it look a little more like a real set.

      - Diffuse Texture (8-bit) :: This texture controls how much light is reflected from each pixel of the surface. Sort of a poor man's HDRI. The floor just under the cannon uses this effect. It's sort of bluish in this shot. If the light dimmed a bit, the cannon would still be quite visible, but the blue floor beneath it would be black. The seams between the tiles are also almost black in the diffuse channel.

      - Normal Map (24-bit) :: I did not use normal maps in this scene. If I had, the bump would look a little more convincing. (Although, for a scene like this, it would have been hard to tell.) These are full color images that represent bump in 3 axes instead of just one. I could have made those vents in the background appear to have more depth to them if I had known about normal maps at the time. To be honest, though, if I did this shot again, I probably would not use them. I would, however, if I were trying to simplify the geometry. There are 1.2 million polygons in this scene. The main reason there are so many is that every edge is rounded. A normal map could have done effectively the same trick at the cost of texture memory. Unfortunately, this would have been painful, as it was this scene took most of my gig of memory to render. As it was, I had dithered down the color textures to 8-bits each. (yes, those are 8-bit images and not 24. I wasn't sure whether to mention that or not... Hard to tell, iddn't it?)

      Assuming I had used normal maps and didn't use an 8-bit image for the color channel, each texture in that scene had 80-bits of data. If I could only have used 24-bit color textures, then I would have seen at least a doubling of the assets. (But not quite tripling..) If I had come from using 8-bit textures... well the numbers turn a lot worse. Unfortunately, I do not know if game companies typically use 8 or 24 bit color t

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  8. Odd... by squidsoup · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Interesting Idea by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, depending on Sony's pricing strategy they may end up selling at a loss again. If the console were to retail for $300 (at this point that's looking doubtful), that would be 1/3 of the cost of the console. That is a LARGE chunk. Now over time that drive would get dirt cheap, but that is still a lot of money.

    Now it does add value (just like the DVD drive in the PS2) if you want a Blue Ray player. That said, I still think it's a good move for Sony in future-proofing. We are already seeing multi-disc DVD games, and with the kind of graphics that people will expect on the XBox 360 you will need lots of space for artwork and models. That means more and more multi-disc games. Having all that extra space will surely help as time goes by.

    It's a gamble. I think it will pay off, but it is a surprisingly high cost for the drive. The Revolution and the XBox 360 are both sporting DVD drives from what we know right now.

    The one thing that comes to mind most with this is: one more reason for Sony to hike the price up. I've been buying consoles at their release since the PS1. But even though I now have a job and it pays well enough, I'm not planning on buying a XBox 360 because it is WAY too expensive. I'll wait for the price drop, or to buy one used because someone didn't like theirs. I trust Sony and would like a PS3. I was planning to buy one. But if it costs more than $300, I'll wait on that too. The Revolution is the only one I don't know the price of, but I'd be willing to pay up to $300 (I expect them to launch at $250), and I intend to buy it.

    Sony and MS are trying to price me out of the market (especially with games). And at this point, they have succeeded at delaying my purchase. If they're not careful, I'll learn I can live without it. If there is one thing I learned during this last generation, it was that I was right assessing the previous generation. N64 vs PS vs DC games? 30+ vs. 6. vs. 4. 'Cube v XBox vs PS2 games? 15+ vs 5 vs 8. DS vs PSP? 10 vs 4.

    Nintendo systems always seem to have the most games that I want. Sony and MS aren't helping themselves with their prices.

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  10. So . . . if you hack your drive . . . by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 5, Funny

    . . . will just the drive be disabled? Or will the DRM gods take out your whole PS3 as just compensation for daring to defy their digital restrictions management/regional price scam schemes?

    --
    I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
  11. Or you could buy it for the GAMES, you know by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.