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How the PS3 Hit $600
Joystiq has up an interesting article today, gathering together information from a couple of places to discuss why the PlayStation 3 is so expensive. From the article: "Kutaragi was demoted after being passed over for the role of CEO and, when former Sony Pictures head Howard Stringer assumed the position, the relationship between the content and technology divisions of Sony became even more intimate. Stringer "quickly dubbed the PlayStation 3 as one of the company's 'champion' products." Kutaragi's desire to stratify the console market with Cell technology in effect wed Sony to the unpalatable prospect of charging an unprecedented price. Coupled with Sony's desire to not only push their own content on HD discs, but to control that medium with their proprietary Blu-ray format, the final price was escalated by two very advanced (and very expensive) pieces of Sony technology."
BluRay IS NOT PROPRIETARY.
t ion
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Associa
Its board of directors consists of:
* Apple Computer
* Dell
* Hewlett Packard
* Hitachi
* LG Electronics
* Mitsubishi Electric
* Panasonic (Matsushita Electric)
* Pioneer Corporation
* Royal Philips Electronics
* Samsung Electronics
* Sharp Corporation
* Sony Corporation
* TDK Corporation
* Thomson
* Twentieth Century Fox
* Walt Disney Pictures
* Warner Home Video Inc.
Not so proprietary now, is it?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I really think Blu-ray will bite Sony in the ass. I know a lot of people who will be getting a Nintendo Wii or XBox because of that price.
The number one reason Sony's PS3 is so expensive is because they are not customer based anymore, they are "theory" based.
The DRM Rootkit seemed like a good idea in "theory".
A $600 game system seems like a good idea in "theory".
In theory I'm not going to buy the PS3, and neither will billions of other humans because of the price.
Oh You POS
I'm really scared for the PS3. I remember reading a recent comment on /. earlier about Sony's last-minute motion-senseing controller reeking of upper management mandating that said feature go into the product. I have a feeling that this same upper management is going to severely harm what was once a pretty sweet console.
-- n
Information collected from RooKit Marketing suggested gamers were willing to pay that much.
Let's face it, they've figured out that without a girlfriend, we've got money to burn.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
From Wikipedia also:
"Proprietary software is software that has restrictions on using and copying it, usually enforced by a proprietor. The prevention of use, copying, or modification can be achieved by legal or technical means. Technical means include releasing machine-readable binaries only, and withholding the human-readable source code. Legal means can involve software licensing, copyright and patent law."
Just because a bunch of companies get together a support a format doesn't mean that format is not proprietary. Is it open? Is it controlled by a common standards body? Can a reader/writer of the format be created by anyone for free?
Not so non-proprietary now, is it?
Developers: We can use your help.
I have inside information from Sony Electronic Entertainment (posting anonymously for obvious reasons) that yields on some of the components like the graphics chip and Blu-Ray controller chipset are as low as 20-30%. In conjunction with those being new and revolutionary technologies only manufactured in a handful of factories in southeast Asia will no doubt contribute to the $649 price point. Oops, did I just reveal something I shouldn't have? ;)
A company blindly ignoring the customer to tend to its own agenda will be its downfall. Or at least the failure of any resulting products.
Developers: We can use your help.
Again... because its technology is too cutting edge and too new and therefore too expensive, would have been much better to go with cheap commodity stuff rather than daring to push the boundaries and actually put some THOUGHT into the product.
But what got me most was this
Coupled with Sony's desire to not only push their own content on HD discs, but to control that medium with their proprietary Blu-ray format.
If the PS3 gets reasonable marketshare then this could be considered its master stroke in 2 years time. While the XBox 360 will need a revision to support HD discs, the PS3 won't.
But what irritates me most is the phrase "their proprietary Blu-ray format". I must have missed the bit where the MS Supported HD-DVD was an open standard with no strings attached. So Sony created an HD disc standard, just like they worked with Phillips on CDs and have created several other professional and consumer format standards, some which flew, some which didn't.
Its a sad state of affairs when Slashdot articles don't even celebrate the invention and the investment, but bitch just about the price and want LESS gadgets in the box, and when the MS supported standard is implicitly suggested to be a more "open" option.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The game (and music and movie) industry is bizarre, deal with it. If the PS3 is fun and gets a sexy reputation, then people will buy it. If people think it's lame, then they won't buy it. I don't think the price has very much influence.
For me, the fact that they added "motion sensing" at the last minute sounds much more worrying for Sony. It sounds like they realized the Wii was going to beat the PS3 and they had to copy it. I think I will get a Wii, not because it's cheap, but because the controller has great potential for fun gameplay.
Sony is really heading into a direction that may land them back in the current generation. The PS2 is still going strong, the only reason that next gen systems are so quickly adopted is because their predicessors are so quickly dropped. It wouldn't surprise me if, after an extremely terrible launch, Sony's only option is to continue with the PS2 for another couple of years. I think that the PS2 could easilly take on the 360 in the next generation, not in power, of course, but in how entrenched the software framework is. Many developers will, obviously, jump ship and opt for the most powerful system. But depending upon the success of the Wii (which, unless the big N makes any huge mistakes, is looking pretty positive), this next generation may turn out to not be about horsepower at all, but about innovative game design. As much as I love the concept of the Wii, it doesn't require having a new gadget to be innovative, Katamari taught us that pretty directly. Sony doesn't make any money on their consoles, they'd probably be more than happy if they could continue selling current-gen games at the same rate as they have been, since licensing is where the money comes from. The dirth of so many great last minute PS2 games may insure the success of the PS2 for a while yet to come. It may be that Sony is planning on a slow adoption rate, and a slow drop in price until the system can really take off in 2 or 3 years.
I'm sorry, I'm still diggin Dragon Quest 8 so much, I'm not sure I really see the need for a generational change in horsepower. Nintendo "gets it", the Wii is only about twice as powerful as the XBox, yet is looking to sell like hotcakes.
Thing is, I'm 25, I have a decent professional job (as a TV commercial producer), and I love the games the Playstation line has given us, yet even I can't justify $600 for a next gen console. If people in my position aren't going to buy it, who will? I think the writing is already on the wall for the PS3, at least for the moment.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
What percentage of people actually use their consoles as a primary movie player? Electronics manufacturers are always dreaming of using convergence as a way to take over the world, but the reality is people are used to spending ~$200 or less on a DVD player, it won't take long for HD players to reach that sort of price range, and the ability of a console to play HD disks will be irrelevant to most people. Can't really see it being seen as a "masterstroke".
Doesn't change the fact that the format war does nothing for the consumer whatsoever, hence the pointed tone about proprietary format. The same tone would be taken with HD-DVD, the point is the consumer gets f@#ked again.
Oh no... it's the future.
What Sony management does not seem to realize is that the American middle class will pay a premium only if the product offers premium quality. Nowadays, I do not see much difference, in quality, between a Sony electronic gadget and, say, a Panasonic electronic gadget. I refuse to pay the Sony premium. Increasingly, other potential and current Sony customers refuse to pay a premium without a corresponding premium in quality. For the year ending on 2006 March 31, the electronics divison of Sony lost $0.6 billion ($1.1 billion - $1.7 billion).
If Sony maintains the $600 price tag, Sony will lose the gaming console market to Microsoft. Armed with a well-funded research division, Microsoft poses a formidable threat to Sony.
P.S.
Curiously, with the fading away of Bell Laboratory as the premier industrial laboratory, Microsoft's research division now assumes the mantle of America's #1 industrial laboratory. It is certainly the coziest laboratory, funded by an almost limitless supply of money from Microsoft.
Sorry, but you don't know what "proprietary" means. Proprietary means that the format is owned by someone, which it is. The fact that a bunch of big companies got together and formed an association doesn't change that fact.
proprietary
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of a proprietor or to proprietors as a group: had proprietary rights; behaved with a proprietary air in his friend's house.
2. Exclusively owned; private: a proprietary hospital.
3. Owned by a private individual or corporation under a trademark or patent: a proprietary drug.
It all depends on which definition you're using. You are assuming definition #3. But it seems clear from the context that the article itself (written by Joystiq?) is using definition #2.
The point is Blu-Ray is no more proprietary than HD-DVD or even regular DVD. The fact that Joystiq used the word at all is implying that Blu-Ray is somehow proprietary in a way that those other formats are not. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to describe it in that manner - I mean the Xbox 360 is using the "proprietary" DVD format and it only costs $300-$400. So this is not a differential between these two systems, and implying that it is is at best biased reporting and at worst just plain incorrect.
It is almost definitely true that the BD drive is one reason why the PS3 is so expensive, but that's just because it's new technology. It's got nothing to do with it being proprietary or not.
Just set a price. A DECENT price. $400.
Then say "the first two shipments will be sold all on eBay by us. Bidding starts now."
The fanboys and early adopters who are willing to shell out will drive all the systems up to $900 or more. Sony will sell 'em all, they'll make a profit (surely PS3s don't cost THAT much to make), and those of us who will wait for a more reasonable price will get it later.
Instead, they're charging EVERYONE $600. They will sell fewer to "normal" people, and they won't get any of those insane profit margins that eBaying the first two shippment would get them. Sony is worse off, the average joe is worse off.
It's simple economics. If you have a hot product, why fuss with stores and go straight to a market decided price (with a minimum, of course) by eBaying them for a while. I'm sure eBay would cut you a huge deal on the auction.
Heck, you're Sony. You can auction them yourself off your site.
But instead of charging $400 and getting tons of proffit from the people willing to pay $1500, you're charging $600 and getting a large loss.
Genius.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
What percentage of people actually use their consoles as a primary movie player?
People who don't want to buy two? Students? No idea, I just know that we coped for several years with a PS2 as the DVD player.
Doesn't change the fact that the format war does nothing for the consumer whatsoever, hence the pointed tone about proprietary format. The same tone would be taken with HD-DVD, the point is the consumer gets f@#ked again.
So what should Sony be doing, trying to get a large industry group behind their standard to help it.... oh hang on they are doing that... how about trying to use a non-proprietary (not yet Open Source) technology such as Java for the interactivity bits... oh hang on they are doing that.
Let's put it this way. If Microsoft, who had an open choice like Intel, had backed Blu-Ray... do you seriously think there would still be a discussion? Can you think of a SINGLE technical reason to back HD-DVD over Blu-ray if you were Microsoft making that decision, BEYOND considering Sony to be competition?
It isn't the same, and it isn't right to say that consumers always get fucked by these standards wars, often they lead to decent competition that drives the price down, and either leads to a dominant standard (VHS v Betamax) or total compatibility (DVD-R+R etc etc). Monopolar approaches tend to work in markets with lots of standards that need to agree(e.g. WiFi with 802.11x).
Microsoft pushing HD-DVD isn't the same as Sony pushing Blu-ray, one company put energy and investment into inventing and creating something, the other made a political decision.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Does any game developer need a BR disc to provide a gameplaying experience that right now they can't fit on a DVD-9? Exactly what groundbreaking new gameplay paradigms are they introducing with the PS3?
Just a glance at the PS3 release schedule on IGN (or other sites) doesn't fill me with the desire to open my wallet to experience TeH aweSome. Turok? NHL 2K7? Sonic? WWE Smackdown? NBA 2K7? Rainbow Six? Madden NFL 07? It looks like the same old piss in a new hi-res bottle. And as much as I want to play MGS4, I'm not going to pay the better part of £500 to do so, no matter what resolution I can now watch Stealth in as a side benefit.
You must think in Russian.
PS3 hit $600 for two reasons. First, Sony decided to make a super-system regardless of price. They needed their dvd format to try and force it to be the dominant format. They needed to create a totally new processor for their system which will end up driving their system into the ground before its potential is realized, because no one knows how to program for it. Second, Sony is making poor design decisions. The internal hard drive situation is awful. As for if people will buy it, I have no doubt that at least a few older gamers will buy it, but the casual gaming market won't. I mean, if you had kis, and you wanted to buy them a system, do you go for the $750 system, controller, and game package, or the $275 one? Hell, if you had two kids, they could each have their own...and thats not to mention that people are more interested in the Wii anyway. http://www.obscuregaming.com/
In this sense DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray are all proprietary. While from the perspective of a programmer or a Linux user DVD absolutely is proprietary, when we talk about things like consumer video formats "propreitary" does not in common parlance mean the same thing as if we were talking about a .DOC file. Consumer electronics standards and software standards are quite different contexts.
Being "owned" is not the same as being propreitary. MP3 is similarly controlled by a commonly licensed patent pool, but nobody tries to pretend Mp3 is propreitary.
By claiming Blu-Ray is "proprietary" in the fashion the article does, it is implying this is something special about Blu-Ray, some quality that HD-DVD and DVD do not share. This is at best misleading and at worst a lie, since Blu-Ray is identical in this respect to other formats.
You're wrong, and the moderators are only moderating you up and the other guy down because they hate Sony and will reward anyone who can make them look bad, whether they're right or not.
When only 15% of American households have HD, going with an ultra expensive storage format only intended for a niche market is not a smart thing. When they don't have HDTVs, consumers can't see any benefits to warrant such a high price, and they'll save their money for something else.
When first adopters are accustomed to spending $300 for a console launch (later adopters get it at the $150-$200 price point), $600 is quite a lot. Double, in fact. As for the price of a TV,
Then again, most early adopters will already have an HDTV, so they're not factoring that price into the equation. A $200 difference is a lot when you're comparing $400 to $600.
Not necessarily true. Aside from the fact that there are games on 360 that you simply can't play on Xbox or PS2 (like Oblivion or PGR3), just because you don't have HD doesn't mean you won't benefit from the newer system's extra horsepower. More actors on screen, more particle effects, better physics and AI, better frame rates (especially imporant in racing games -- PGR3 on 360 at 60fps is much smoother than Forza on Xbox at 30fps), etc. Sure, you don't get the benefit of higher resolution textures, and you may have to sacrifice some vertical resolution for letterboxing, but outside of first-person shooters where pixel-level accuracy counts you're not going to miss it all that much.
Come on.. calm down. The price will be down to $400 after a few months, unless the Sony CEO prefers to staple all those unsold PS3s in his office.. (presuming he has such a huge office)...
Georg
There is a great desire among slashdotters to see Sony fail. They can't really fault the hardware so they got to focus on the price and common sense be damned.
The PS3 not having as innovative a controller as the Wii. Neither does the 360. You don't hear people about that.
The cell is actually a really powefull piece of tech so you can't make claims that it is underpowered or something.
The PS3 will fail or succeed based on wether it can have games that are worth the price. Can the hardware be put to real use and can we get games that blast anything on the 360/PC away? So far nothing is showing up that impresses me but then none of the consoles impress me.
The games don't really have to innovative. Give me F.E.A.R and just use that massive CPU to put 60 ai's in the game at the same time. That would sell me. Well if I can use a mouse with it.
Oh just give me a PS3 with linux and an open spec to the hardware.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You miss the entire point.
Both PS3 and XBOX 360 are going after a shrinking market. There just aren't that many people out there who give a rats ass about either of them; the gaming market has gotten more and more narrow.
Normal people don't spend $400-700 on a video game console with a game or two. That's enough to buy a fully-loaded PC. And let's not forget the $60 games they expect you to continue to buy to go along with it, many of which suck and you feel like a big chump for spending your hard earned dollars on it.
Budgets on these games keep going up, they get more convoluted (not specificly complex), the control schemes are so whacked that it takes 10 hours to figure out just how to play some of them, and so many are simply rehashes of each other with pretty new skins. The audience for these titles is dwindling, not growing.
And among those that do want it, the easy-to-impress-with-pretty-things 12-17 year old market, they won't even be able to afford it. "Gee, Mom and Dad, can I have a $600 game system for Christmas? Oh, and I'll need a few $60 games too!" I don't know many kids in that age bracket that aren't from wealthy families who can save up that much cash from their after-school jobs.
People want fun, easy to play, but hard to master, games. Sony and MS are going after their shrinking audience, and the rest of the world is waiting for something like the Wii, which will be affordable, accessable, innovative, and it looks like will have some hella fun games.
Let Sony and MS fight over the dwindling "hardcore" market, and watch as Wii sells numbers that neither company can possibly imagine. Hell, even my parents want one - and they haven't touched a console since the NES let them play DuckHunt. I'm no Nintendo apologist, but I've got to tell you this time it really looks like their innovation is going to pay off.
AE
except that $50 to a normal person is 50 beers, or a whole week supply.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I think the PS3 is coming out at just the right time and price point for Sony. HDTVs are flying off the shelves now, this being the first year HDTV sales exceed analog TV. The point of Blu-Ray in the very near future will be as a strong competitor to going to the Movie Theater. In fact if Blu-Ray truly supports 1080P and not just 1080P upconverted from 24fps but full-blown 60fps then in many/most cases the viewing experience will be far better than your average Ciniplex.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again. If Sony really wants to get early adopters on board they should try to get the IMAX catalog converted to 60fps 1080P as quickly as possible, that and start shooting new movies in 60fps in an IMAX-lite version -- it would be fairly easy to adapt 24fps cinema equipment to 60fps. Pans would loose their jitter, double vision look. Action sequences would seem more realistic.
Now it maybe that some future hyper-internet will support HDTV on demand, but for the next 5 years Blu-Ray will offer the best cheapest delivery system despite what Bill Gates has to say on the subject -- that and Hollywood's reluctance to distribute on anything other than a physical medium.
One last note about visual quality, I recently watched "Passage to India" (shot in 70mm) in HDTV. The quality was glorious. This because the graininess of standard 35mm confuses HD compression and robs the final mpeg of the resolution it is really capable of. Films shot either direct to HD, with HD-video cameras, or converted from 70mm prints really show the real potential image clarity of HD. Hollywood will soon have to start factoring image quality of HD viewing into account when shooting new content.
Letter To Iran
A new video format that only allows for greater picture quality (with the max resolution of the best res HDTV 1080p) and movie length on a single disc. Thats no reason to upgrade from DVD's 480P, for life yo! What more do you want a new format to do? A dual layer blu-ray disc holds 50gigs and they've already gotten 8 layers working on the lab. Plus blu-ray has this new highly scratch resistant coating that appears to work really well.
I don't know about everyone else but I've been holding out on HDTV's simply because there wasn't much I could do with one. HD gaming and cinema changes all of that. Half the reason most HDTV's don't look so good in stores is that a good portion are playing on dvd's with 480 lines of resolution. About 40% of the HDTV's in sam's are getting an actual hdtv feed.
In summary a blu-ray drive will give you the following:
1) Longer Movie Runtime
2) Maxed out HDTV Resolution
3) Scratch resistant coating that will alleviate one of the biggest longevity issues with dvd's.
I'm not sure what more I could want with a new format.
Hmmm... Pie...
I think the problem with your reasoning here is that, while lots of slashbots rail against the focus on HD by Sony and MS, most of them know HD is going to happen sooner or later. When that time comes, your $500 PS3 is a lot less useful.
You might think I'm clueless, but you should pay attention if you want to know how this is going to go.
I'm 40 years old and I've never owned a game console. Does that make me clueless? No, I've seen other consoles but I've been waiting for a networked enabled version that's really up to PC based gaming. Xbox was not it and the whole line will never will be more than a second rate PC.
We'll see if PS3 sucks or not. When it comes out, I'll walk down to a store and have a look. The descriptions so far look like a winner, no matter what crazy things we might imagine happen inside Sony's corporate headquarters. I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what it's like to work inside a huge company that speaks a language I can't read or speak. My only doubts come from the fact that it will be non free, even though IBM's got all sorts of SDK for cell and it's going to run a Linux kernel. I can put up with a non free set top box if it works well enough. What really matters is what's delivered. At that point, I just might spend the few hundreds of bucks I have not wasted on Xbox and ultra expensive wintel video cards.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
PS2 production couldn't face the demand during the first months. I'm maybe naive :-) but...Maybe they set the price at $600 to face the demand and few months later they will drop the price to challenge the XBOX 360.
;-).
Only fools, fanatics or wealthy people will buy it at such a price.
Anyway I may consider it...If it has a keyboard, a mouse, a VGA/DVI output, USB to a printer and a well known operating system with tons of applications (ie: if it is a PC).
The only console right now that fits to my budget is the Wii. I'm 30, working, a nice job...Bu I've got a house to pay, a car to pay...Blue ray or not
This is the pricing we've been used to in the UK. The Xbox and PS2 were both released here for £299 ($555.89). When they were released in the states for what was the equivalent of £160.825 ($299). So when you're forking out your $600, have a think about what we're gonna have to pay!
- There are piles of unsold PS3s at launch.
- There are spot shortages but by and large, if you want a $600 PS3 you can get one.
- PS3s sell so well you can't get one except on ebay for $1000.
From Sony's perspective, 2 out of 3 outcomes count as a win.Moreover, once the intial "I'll buy no matter what the price" crowd has passed through, Sony can drop their price and /. will dutifully announce the price drop.
To see which way the chips fall, we'll have to wait until Sony ships. Until then, I'm skipping any PS3 rumors on /. .
In addition, over a quarter of these gamers said they wanted DVD (or HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or whatever) playback in their console. However, they weren't questioned about the price point for a PS3, so I don't know if they would change their tune once they saw the cost!
Because the point of MS Research is not to create products. The point of MS Research is just to employ the best and brightest minds in the business-- for the sole purpose of tying them all up, so they aren't somewhere else creating brilliant projects that would eventually turn into Microsoft competitors. Microsoft doesn't want researchers. They just don't want anybody else to have researchers. Researchers are dangerous, every once in a great while they create innovative ideas, and new ideas change markets, and change is bad if, like Microsoft, you derive your power from stasis.
Better to keep all the brilliant minds fat and lazy, busy being highly paid to contemplate their navels and concentrate on extracting sunlight from cucumbers, instead of letting them run around loose in the real world where they might do something scary like trying to change it.
You ever read Brave New World? Remember, at the end, what it turned out they really did with all of the political dissidents...?
Because there are enough spoiled kids, dumb parents and gaming yuppies that will buy it for Sony to make a profit.
I have no use for console gaming systems. They are bad model for consumers but the target market just hasn't figured it out yet.
Why would so many bright people that use OPEN SOFTWARE buy PROPRIETARY gaming systems?
For $600, why not buy a PC that can run games and do useful stuff too?
Is that a SCSI connector or are you just glad to see me?
I don't know what all the fuss is about. Throughout the life of a console, you will spend hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing, and for the most part, you'll be happily entertatined. Just to run some numbers (and these may be high for some and really low for others), let's say you play for 30 minutes per day, every day, for three years. That's around 545 hours, or just over 3 weeks.
Name some other source of comparable entertainment (non-console) that costs less than that. Drugs? Hookers? Gambling? Booze? No, hell no, no, and no. As far as I'm concerned, $600 is nothing for the amount of entertainment I'm buying - I think the other companies are stupid for not charging more.
Plus, truth be told, the people who are complaining the loudest aren't the people the console companies really care about - if you can't dig up $600 for a console, then you're certainly not going to be opening your wallet to buy new controllers, new games, etc.
You can complain all you like about being poor or whatever sob story it is this week - face it: you own a computer, and you obviously know enough about it to post comments on Slashdot. You're not doing too bad - save the complaining for the kids at the orphanage (and even then, pretty soon they'll have more PS2s than they could ever possibly use).
The price of $600 is repeated endlessly, yet iit is false - the base PS3 is $500. The $600 model really only gets you HDMI, which you don't need to play games at 1080p and watch movies at 1080i. Why would you pay more to get less?
The price of $500 is already expensive enough that you can have good discussions around buy-in at that price, all without over-inflating figures and thus making the rest of what you say suspect. After all, if they can't even get the price right what are we supposed to think about other facts they are presenting? The article mentions the $500 prine in passing as watered-down, but does not explain how - given that lack of completeness I have to assume the rest of the research they have done is similarily half-assed as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can you think of a SINGLE technical reason to back HD-DVD over Blu-ray if you were Microsoft making that decision, BEYOND considering Sony to be competition?
I can think of a few off the top of my head:
1) HD-DVD drives are less expensive
2) HD-DVD has a mandatory managed copy requirement
3) HD-DVD doesn't have region coding
4) HD-DVD discs are less expensive to produce
5) HD-DVD discs can be produced with DVD9 content on one side and HD-DVD content on the other (ie: good upgrade story)
6) HD-DVD discs are more fault tolerant than blu-ray
7) Hi-def Movies don't need more than 25 of storage space with modern codecs
Sure, $600 is quite expensive, and I doubt I'll be getting one in any hurry. but I'm not sure it's overpriced for what you're getting...
Plenty of people have pointed out that the PS3 will double as a Blu-ray movie player, and at launch it will probably be cheaper than the first round of standalone players; but not everyone cares about HD movies.
But what about the reports that:In addition to being a fairly radical departure from Sony's current position on homebrew (eg PSP), this could put the PS3 into a different category to the other consoles -- the potential to be a general purpose home computer, out of the box.
Sure, the PS2 had a Linux addon kit available... for about $200 extra. This got you Linux, a hard drive, a keyboard & mouse, plus a special video adapter was required so you could use a monitor. You also needed to pony up for a memory card dedicated to Linux (there's another $20 or so). Even then you couldn't access some of the basic hardware, like the optical drive, and the PS2 hardware is kind of limited for general purpose use: it only has 32MB memory and a ~300MHz CPU.
The PS3, on the other hand, will come with Linux and the HDD as standard. Any USB keyboard and mouse should work. It's got a very powerful CPU, and 512MB memory. HDMI will give you monitor resolutions (you could even use a DVI adapter to connect to an actual monitor). For that $600, you're getting the next generation Sony console, but you may also be getting quite a reasonable living-room PC as well...
This is all prerelease specs, so it may not turn out this way... but if it does, maybe the PS3 isn't so overpriced after all?
It first goes ahead and assume Cell will cost a lot more than (for example) the CPU in Xbox 360. There's no reason to think so. Cell is not a monster chip, it's similar in transistor count to the PS3 GPU, the Xbox 360 GPU and the Xbox 360 CPU.
Second, the article assumes Sony made decisions which made the PS3 more expensive around the end of last year when 360s were selling for $700 on eBay. Whether $700 is a reasonable price for a console or not, PS3 was already set in stone before 360 even came out. The 360 availability fiasco didn't enter into any of the technical decisions.
Both of those things being said, I think $600 is an awful price.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
As a video gamer, my opinion counts the most.
:-p.
:-).
:-D.
:-p.
:-D. http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/232/ 23280.html (screenshots included) that is a freaken side scroller on a z80 4mhz processor baby and I soo wish I had another processor processing just graphical crap that wasn't really important to the game play but for "coolness".
:-).
So everyone listen to me
Xbox 360: I dont know anyone who has it. Maybe I am getting too old (still a teen though). I want a next generation system but I am willing to wait because I know the first system out is not always the best one. Dreamcast *ahem* Which I still love
Wii: This is something that shocked me in a good way. I was just wondering how videogames would be in the future, and this one hit that spot on the head. After looking at the controller and watching people play it at e3, I am ready to forget how to strafe and shoot and circle around the guy and own them with my analogs (My teacher would write RO). Because games these days even first person shooters are confusing as hell. I seriously felt like it was uncivilized or something trying to play with a analog stick. And then I got back to reality and I realize that this was my only choice. FOR NOW
*off topic* I was playing halo and owning my lil cuz, untill he took out his sword and kept killing me. I thought their was some skill behind using it but now I learned you just look at the guy and press the shoot button as fast as you can HOW RETARTED IS THAT. and obviously being an old school gamer I could press my fire button the quickest
PS3: The current discussion. First I would like to say I have a pretty decent job and I am living with my parents and going to college so I am not really worried about cash. So my opinion might sound stupid. I WANT IT. I WANT IT NOW. I know I am not gono play it at all after I get my wii, but I still want it. I am not getting a freaken hi-deff tv to see huge pixels and miss drawn shadows. The fact is I am living in the year 2006 and I want to see some tech that will blow my mind. The cell processor sounds crazy. I am majoring in CS, actually almost done with it, and the cell processor is something to really look at from a scientific point of view (for me any ways). I have made games before for my ti-86
So wii is a given. And my other choice is between xbox 360 and ps3. I have xbox and I truthfully play my dreamcast more then the xbox. Kinda sad I know. So I am willing to pay for a pretty looking ps3
PS: can we get a freaken spellchecker in here. What is this web 1.0?
From what I know, only HDMI/DVI are going to get you 1080p and bandwidth being limited you'll only get 30FPS on those cables.
That is incorrect. Do a search on AVSForums or other AV forums (like this post). Component cables actually offer significantly more bandwidth than is required for even 1080p (can handle up to 2048x1200, or something along those lines). There are TV's on the market today (a Westinghouse model for one) that does 1080p from component inputs, in the thread I pointed to a Barco is mentioned.
I have read that a number of different TV's that currently accept 1080p over component allow a maximum rate of 30Hz, vs. 60Hz for 1080p over HDMI. But a constant refresh of 30Hz, if achieved by a game, is still going to look pretty good - after all, it's what TV on HD is broadcast at!
This myth of 1080p not being usable over component cables is I think the biggest factor to not understanding why the $500 PS3 is actually a preferable model over the $600 one. We have all been fed that line to prepare for the need to switch to HDMI, when in fact there was never a need at all other than for the companies to try and protect video content from player to TV at great cost to the consumer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Another thing this article left out - the ballooning price of PS3 is also the result of ballooned R&D costs due to design incompetence and failure.
The original PS3 design called for 3 Cell processors and no GPU. Each Cell CPU was to have 1 logic unit and 8 SPE's, and graphics would be done in software mode. Sony ended up with egg on their face and had to run to nVidia to bail them out.
Originally nVidia was called in for "consultation" purposes, and both parties denied a GPU was in the works. But inevitably, Sony's lakluster design forced them to purchase nVidia's PC GPU to overcome the Cells graphical inability. Turning to nVidia costed Sony much more than they planned to spend, and buying the PC GPU's costed them even more.
To add insult to injury, low yields forced Sony to cut the SPE's down to 7 operational SPE's per Cell, and costs forced them to cut 2 Cell processors away completely. Now we have an over-engineered, overpriced, and underwheliming architecture. Don't let Soy's infalted numbers fool you, the X360 was brilliantly designed, PS3 was botched, so for all the hype and price, you pay 2x the money for the same quality system, and Sony loses assloads of money. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone (except nVidia, who will walk away from this with a really fat bank account.)
Let's not forget that Microsoft plans to bundle Halo III with 360 consoles, and launch competitively
launch them on the same day the PS3 launches.
If the $600 pricetag doesn't kill the PS3 all by itself, the competition will.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I think they could have phrased that more tastefully.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
that is excited to get a $600 HD movie player that also plays games? A player alone is $500 minimum! Basically I am spending $100 on a next gen game console. This is as great a bargin as my PS2. I never had to buy a DVD player.
I never thought Slashdot would be filled with such ludites.
And for the record, if the X-Box had an HD-DVD drive, I would have bought it. But it doesn't and I won't. (Oh and it needed digital video out)
They do now.http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060526
Please don't start this bullshit again. This argument is based on an entirely specious argument, that vinyl is supposedly "analog" while CDs are "digital". Well, repeat after me: "THE UNIVERSE IS QUANTIZED".
Vinyl records are made of individual molecules, the pick-up stylus is made of individual carbon atoms, electric current is carried by individual electrons. The final consequence of this is noise. Any good electrical or electronics engineering curriculum will have a course on probabilistic modelling where you learn how to calculate the noise resulting from the discretization of electric charge.
When the CD standard was created, one simple question was made: which level of quantization noise in the encoding will be low enough to be irrelevant, considering other sources of noise and distortion?
I have a Shure V15 type 4 cartridge, which was near to the top of the line in vinyl reproduction technology when I bought it. I don't remember the exact specs for it, but the distortion value was something around 1%, excellent compared to other models, but just terrible if compared to digital technology. If you take a look at the specs for the newest cartriges from Shure you'll see the don't even mention specs for things like distortion or noise. Try to google for distortion specs on audio cartridges, can you find any that comes close to CD quality in fidelity? It's hard to find anyone that actually gives measured specs for noise and distortion, they just say it's "amazingly low" or similar marketese.
If there is any objection to CD quality, perhaps it's that it's too good. Most people are satisfied by the inferior specs of mp3. However only ignorant people, based on faulty reasoning, would believe that something is better just because it's labeled "analog" instead of "digital".
OTOH, I agree with you on what you say about lossy video encoding. But that's not a result of being digital, it's a result of compression. In the analog world, 8 mm film has lower quality than 35 mm film, is that so surprising? Put enough lines in the video, use a better encoding, and the artifacts will disappear.
Differently from CD audio, digital video today doesn't have standards that comply with the best possible quality, because the needed data volume is too big for current technology. Color depth of 8 bits per channel are insufficient, the human eye can see much more than 256 levels of any color. The eye has a variable resolution, but the video cannot count on that. Since you can look at any detail with the best part of your eye, a perfect video encoding should have each part of the scene encoded at the best resolution of the human eye.
A digital video standard designed like CD audio was specified, to comply with the full sensitivity of human eyes, would be something like 16 bits resolution for each primary color, 30 frames per second, 4800x2400 pixels. Without compression, that's 2 Gigabytes / second.
I just found out that my current 3Ghz PC with 6800 GT CANNOT play h264 at 1080i. All of sudden a PS3 with cell processor, RSX board and linux pre-installed is a steal.