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Lower-Price PS3 Mostly Upgradeable
jchenx writes "One of the biggest questions remaining after the Sony press conference and E3 last week was whether or not the core PS3 package could be upgraded to the premium one. It looks like that question has been answered. GI.biz reports that the core version can upgraded with WiFi and memory card adapters, as well as a higher capacity hard drive. However, HDMI output will be non-upgradeable."
Wi-Fi- Even if there was no sony specific adapter, you could always use an Ethernet bridge.
Card reader: I suppose it is nice to hear confirmation on this one. Still, it's not something I'd use that often.
Hard drive: Wasn't this announced to be removable a while ago? And if it's removable, you can be damn sure that Sony will let you spend more money than a hard drive actually costs to upgrade it.
HDMI: What's this about "mostly upgradable"? Maybe it's just me, but of the features on the $500 PS3 that're missing, this is by far the most important one. Granted, the studios don't seem to be using HDCP at the moment, but if they do eventually, you're screwed. Hello near SD resolution without buying a whole new player.
Of course it can be upgraded to the premium version. There are two easy steps:
1. Sell the core unit on ebay.
2. Buy the premium version.
The PS3 price is insane.
It's not insane historically speaking (see the charts) but it's insane to price it at $500 or $600.
The Wii is rumored to come out at $200-$250, so that's two for the price of the minimal PS3. But to compare the PS3 to Xbox 360, we have can look at it's price percentage. Between min and max, PS3's percent difference is (600-500)/500 or approximately 20%. The Xbox 360 has a difference of (400-300)/300 which is 33%. What's the point of upgrading later when another 20% of the bill will get you the full thing? To me that sounds foolish. I can definitely see that working with the Xbox but not when you're talking about prices around $600. If I'm going to pay that much, might as well throw on another $100.
I'm not concerned if it's upgradable and, frakly, I won't be too concerned with the PS3 until I see what it can do. Can it do twice what the Wii or Xbox 360 can? That remains to be seen.
My work here is dung.
The truth here is that Sony has made a mis-step. First of all, they've got time to work on a better core system. However, if the only real thing driving the price from the core to the super-duper is the Blu-Ray Drive, then they should have exact same specs, but with no HDMI output.
:)) but Sony really is making some hardcore mistakes that will cost them in the long run in the gaming division.
I mean, I can understand that.
But to have other things crippled too? Lower hard drive (by that little amount of gig space) is not going to affect the price that much. And if you're losing near $400-500 per unit already, what's another $50?
But really, there's no excuse to not have the other bells and whistles, when WE KNOW that the reason for the cost justification is that HDMI output stuff. THAT'S the cost (well, at least 80% of it.) So I can justify that a little more. But the upgrades will likely be like the 360's where it will cost more to upgrade piece by piece than it would to buy the higher priced system. To have that, WITHOUT the ability to ever do HD graphics(which, IMO, is what next-gen is about, at least for Sony and MS), well, it's just sub-par.
I am NOT a fanboy of any of the three systems (actually I really liked the Turbo Grafix 16 back in the day
I don't think they're out of business by ANY stretch of the words, but between the loss of rumble (for a less than stellar motion sensor) in the controllers, the price, and the lack of TRUE functionality on the core system, they're going to piss a lot of loyal customers off, enough to check out other systems (or at least NOT buy the PS3).
When was the last time you paid for something you 'almost' got?
Maybe I'll 'almost' buy a PS3...
Here's to hoping that the lack of HDMI on the low-end model will keep content providers from ever implementing the ICT flag on movies. There's a slim chance that this move by Sony will keep that from happening.
This guy's the limit!
It becomes even clearer when you compare opportunity costs. For the price of a PS3 and one game (~$660), you could buy a Wii and 10 games! (Charitably favoring the PS3 by assuming the Wii starts at $250 and has $40 games.) And to even notice the HDTV difference, you have to buy such a TV, which will cost you $1000, which could have bought 25 Wii games. (!) Yes, this ignores sales tax, but since it's an opportunity cost comparison, the conclusions hold regardless.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
This is exactly what Sony is hoping for, sacrificing PS3 sales to try to push their Blu-Ray agenda. Unfortunatley it may be ultimately successful in establishing Blu-Ray as the winner in the next-gen DVD format wars.
Alternatively it could backfire and cause both Blu-Ray as well as the PS3 itself could end up failing.
Sony can promise all they want in regard to their own movies. The minute a big studio decides to follow the "down-rezzing via component" path, however, is the minute that the $500 PS3 becomes a pain in the ass and not fully functional as a Blu-Ray player. That isn't FUD (or, if it is, then it's accurate, very possible FUD) because the people who pushed for the inclusion of that damned protection in the hardware are exactly the people who will be deciding whether or not to use it.
I get that this issue only affects a minority of potential owners, but that's the group of people who would most want an HD movie format in the first place. Pure gamers will only care about the games and the issue isn't that big for them. But, they should still be aware that this secondary functionality of the PS3 can be easily crippled by the movie industry.
I think some people are confused about HDMI here. You do NOT need an HDMI cable/connection to view high def (1080p). You can get high def with component video as well, which supports up to 1080p resolution. Both PS3 versions will have component out (AFAIK). From what I've read and seen, a high def signal looks the same in HDMI or component.
In regards to the PS3, you should only care about HDMI if a) that's the only input your TV supports (mine has 1 HDMI, 2 component) or b) you're concerned about buying a DRM burdened Blu-Ray movie that only allows a HDMI connection.
I wouldn't be surprised if the base PS3's '20Gb' drive is actually exactly the same as the non-crippled PS3's 60Gb, just with two platters disabled...
Dude, it's even worse than you imagined. Instead of crippling 2 platters, they actually removed them!
I guess I am missing something but why would HDMI not be upgradable. The standard XBOX 360 came with plain A/V cables that can be upgradable to component cables. I would assume that sony just like every other console has a special connection on the back where you have to buy a special approved cable that can have A/V, component or HDMI output.
Apples and oranges.
Component, RCA or VGA are all analog video connections.
DVI or HDMI are digital video connections.
You can convert from analog to analog pretty easy. You can convert from digital to digital pretty easy. You can get a cheap cable that converts from VGA to Component. You can get a cheap cable that converts from DVI to HDMI.
However, converting from analog to digital is an entirely different and very difficult matter. Go looking for a converter box that converts from component to DVI or from component to HDMI and you're going to be paying near a hundred dollars, and you may have to sacrifice picture quality.
The PS3, according to the SCEJ spec sheet published during E3, has a special "A/V Multi Out" connector on the back. You apparently plug a component video dongle into there. If Sony had wired the "A/V Multi Out" to provide digital data in addition to analog, you could plug in a dongle that converts to HDMI really cheap and be on your way. But they apparently didn't do this, and apparently they only provide analog. So you can get a cheap converter to component or RCA or VGA or whatever... but if you want a converter to HDMI or DVI, you are screwed forever, you have to go and spend another $600 on the HDMI output version of the PS3.
Similarly, it's going to be really cheap to upgrade that XBox 360 to component, because that's analog to analog. But the XBox 360 doesn't offer digital out, so you're not going to be able to upgrade it to DVI or HDMI without buying an entire new XBox 360 (assuming an XBox 360 with DVI or HDMI output even exists, which it doesn't.)
The really bizarre and crazy thing here is that Sony can't possibly be saving all that much money by doing this. It isn't that putting HDMI output on the cheap PS3, or putting digital information into the A/V multi out output that's already there, would be all that difficult. The only reason why all those analog-to-digital converters are so expensive is because they actually have to convert analog to digital, which is not a trivial act. When Sony is designing the PS3, though, they don't have to convert anything to anything. They've already got digital inside the box, and they actually have to convert it to analog before they can pump it out to the component video. Considering how easy it would have been to provide some mechanism that would allow a $500 PS3 to be upgraded to digital video output later (thus turning the $500 PS3 from the "broken version" into just the version that's missing a couple of bells and whistles) it's mind-boggling they are choosing to screw over their customers this way.