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CNN On The $500 PS3

Posted by Zonk on from the whizbangs-and-fobbles dept.

Chris Morris reports in CNN's Game Over column that analysts have pegged the price point for the PS3 at $500. Despite the high price, you're getting a lot of tech for your buck. From the article: "The strongest argument behind the $499 price point is the PS3's inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive. This bleeding edge technology will give Sony significant bragging rights, but it comes at a cost. Pioneer last week at the Consumer Electronics Show unveiled a standalone Blu-Ray player for $1,800. Obviously, Pioneer's earning some profit there - and Sony will almost certainly subsidize the cost of the drives, but you're still looking at an expensive bit of hardware. The PS3 will also feature other pricey items, such as a hard drive, the Cell processor and a new graphics chip from nVidia."

1 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:doesn't matter by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Exactly.

    A huge deal was made about how much less the PS2 cost than a standalone DVD player, since at the time the pricing was announced DVD players cost $1000+, but before release day came, DVD player prices were down in the $100-$120 price range (I paid $120 for a Toshiba DVD player 2 months before the PS2 release) because the PS2 anouncement took the premium value away from the standalone players. Those player manufacturers certainly weren't taking a loss on the players at the lower price point, and they didn't get 90% more efficient at building them in a matter of weeks either...

    The biggest expense in producing BluRay players is all the electronics to generate an HD signal, and all that stuff is in next-gen consoles anyway. There will be a moderate increase in the cost of the optics and the price of the patent licenses (which sony doesn't have to pay to itself), but other than that it costs essentially the same amount to build a BluRay reader as DVD reader. The manufacturers just want everybody to think it costs so much so they can make a ton of profit selling to early adopters. Sony has played the PR game so well that ever these stupid analysts believe the cost is high, and the analysts that are smart enough to see through it don't get publicity because they aren't saying anything controversial. Publishing a story like that wouldn't generate any ad revenue.