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CNN On The $500 PS3
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."
The entire article is nothing but speculations about the price. The article even says they have no idea what the price will be and that it is all just guesswork; especially since Sony made no other comment than "...it's all just speculation".
Why is this considered front page news for Slashdot?
$500 is the price of a basic deskop system. Its your average Dell machine, or the cheapest Lenovo machine.
For this money youre getting a CPU way better than most chips put into the Dells and Lenovos out there, and a graphics card to envy. Consoles have become more and more desktop-like, and the PS3 should be compared to high-end desktops. Give me a decent keyboard, mouse, possibly a PCI slot or ability to connect to most common networks, and an OS to work with and I'll call it a desktop.
The CPU however in itself is worth the pricetag. I'm considering getting the PS3, not for gaming at all, but to use as a linux desktop system running on 8 64-bit PPC cores, each of which runs at more than 2GHz. Go find that at $500.
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Think about it. Even if Pioneer is just price gouging for the fun of it, 1800 is one hell of a gouge. I imagine that the controllers and most of the hardware is the same as a standard DVD player (well, more precise, perhaps). But a new kind of lens and obviously a way to produce a "blu-ray" to read with could be pretty pricey right now.
On the other hand, if Pioneer is making oh, $300 bucks on each, that's still a 1500 buck drive. Prices are not likely to drop much more than 30-40%, and Sony isn't likely to lose 500 bucks on the drive alone. Let's face it. Sony may have deep pockets, but even MS isn't stupid enough to gamble like that.
The way I see it, Pioneer better be super-gouging that price. (maybe it writes, I didn't catch anything about that). Sony and MS have both had major drive problems with exhisting tech, so this looks bad for the consumer. Real bad. And I've been drooling over the idea of a PS3 for a long time now.
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This new technology is 1) Extremely expensive to manufacture and 2) Very primitive in its current state.
I expect the PS3 to hit at 500-600, and cost nearly double to manufacture. PS3 will sell more units than the 360 (due to Japan) so they can take a larger loss-per-console. In the end the Blu-Ray will not be worth the extra price, and I guarantee the quality (and image quality in movies) of the first generation Blu-Ray drive will suck.
Suppose they're right about Blu-ray. It takes off, even though Blu-Ray players drop say, half the price from $1800 to $900. Now the PS3 looks like a steal, right? What happens when people start buying PS3s just for Blu-ray players? Sure Sony can say we have over X million consoles in homes... but if only half of those owners actually end up buying more than one or two games a year, I think game manufacturers will catch on pretty quick. Installation of PS3s isn't the only thing Sony and its developers want... the people have to want to buy games too...
Despite the high price, you're getting a lot of tech for your buck.
I dont want a lot of tech for $500, I just want something that plays games that is affordable. Of course I am getting a Revolution, but I also want something that will play Metal Gear Solid 4 and some other sony-exclusive titles -and that will have to be a PS3. Make a machine that plays games and leave all the media extender dual 1080p output bullshit to the people who want it.
As far as video clarity goes Blu Ray & HD-DVD are going to fail unless they force studios to stop making DVD's. Read any of the CES coverage and you'll find 1080p plasmas running a Blu Ray/HD movie and the same set running a regular DVD on an upconverting dvd player.
Every one of them says the difference is hardly noticeable, slight bit of extra sharpness to the picture for the HD one. This is NOT the jump from VHS to DVD.
Other than for data storage these two formats are about 7-10 years ahead of when they'd really be needed.
Why they felt the need to try and push another new format on top of DVD is beyond me. Sounds like a pissing match that got out of hand. Where was the guy standing up in the meeting asking "Wait why are we spending time and tons of money on this right at this moment?"
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The current high pricing on next-gen disc media players is impacted hardly at all by manufacturing costs. There's a need to recoup development costs and the manufacturers probably also have to pay some technology licensing fees. The cost of parts, assembly, and packing are probably the least expensive per unit cost in delivering one right now. The more they charge up front to the early adopters, the quicker they can drop the price into a range mainstream consumers will be willing to pay. This is especially important if I'm right in thinking that nobody really wants a replacement for the DVD yet.
So, to tie this back into the PS3, putting Sony's preferred format player into the PS3 is very smart. Sony is going to have a lot of demand for the PS3, likely quite a bit in excess of the demand for a next generation DVD player. With those units in households, there's a greater incentive for other companies to release media on Blu-ray, especially if Sony releases its media holdings. And that's why Microsoft missed the boat with the 360 in not including its preferred format, HD-DVD. Now that console would have market fragmentation, making it a lot less likely that third party developers would use HD-DVD, which of course means that fewer XBox360 owners will go for the HD-DVD upgrade. It looks like Microsoft is hoping that offering greater support for HD-DVD over other media drives in Vista and its dominance in desktop software will make up for that. It might.
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You know, as I sit here and realize that we are all yammering on about how a $500 price point is too high, it strikes me that hundreds, if not thousands of Xbox360's changed hands on Ebay for well over $500 not a month ago. The non-core version is still selling for more than $500 in a few auctions.
We all know that the PS3 will blow the doors off the 360 (and some of us saw this @ CES), so where's the problem with the $500?
The simple truth is that if it hits at $500, and you want it, you'll buy it. And if there is a shortage, and you still want it, you'll pay $1000 for it on Ebay.
Its going to be the SAME thing here folks. Is it really that hard to remember what Sony did last time annd reflect that here?
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I agree with previous posters that Sony could come out with the PS3 $999 and still sell out at launch, but they'd be crazy to do so. Even if they came out really high with the intention to drop the price significantly once sales to the hardcore fell off, the high initial price may have permanently scared off more casual buyers. Those casual buyers might even throw up their hands and spend their PS3 money on an Xbox 360. So if Sony launches at $499, they're taking a big risk on a console that will not have a lot of great games on launch (there simply isn't enough time) and for which there aren't going to be a lot of Blu-Ray movies either. To compete, I don't think they have any choice but to come out at no more than $399 in the U.S., likely more in Japan because they can get away with it there. Though, even in Japan, a high priced PS3 may not fly given that it will have to contend with a much cheaper Nintendo Revolution which is a bigger threat to them at home than Xbox 360.
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