So the HD-DVD movies are almost out of space as it is and there seems to be no space savings at all in using MP4 over MP2. And it seems that space is at more of a premium than we had thought, with Blu-Ray having a distinct edge once dual layer discs arrive.
You're ignoring a few critical details: bitrate and quality.
If you take a 6gb dvd encoded with mpeg2, you can encode it at the same quality using 2gb of space.
I could encode a bluray movie in 2gb, but it would look like crap. It in no way means that the new codecs are somehow yielding poorer results than mpeg2. Given two files of equal size, one encoded with mpeg4 or vc1, and one encoded with mpeg2, the mpeg4/vc1 file will be closer to the source material than the mpeg2 file.
The logical response to your observation is that the final size of the encoded video is being dictated by the total amount of content provided on the disc, not by the amount of space available.
That's terrific, for you. But not everyone is satisfied with that sort of solution. Which explains why someone would choose a standalone player over a PS3.
Now the other side of the coin you are not thinking of is POTENTIAL market
If that were the only factor, UMDs would have taken off.
You are not thinking of the many extras that might be included, like many two disc sets collapsing for one - very appealing for those that rent movies as there is no longer a second disc they'll never see.
I don't think you have much of a sense for how much space a hi-def movie requires with next gen codecs; a standard def dvd that normally takes 6gb can be shrunk to 2gb. Hi-def content contains 6x as much data. If you assume that the size of the compressed file increases linearly with the amount of data (which would be a worse case) you're looking at 12gb for a hi-def movie.
Easy in an early market when you have low production rates. There are always early adoptors that will buy in at any price with any number of problems, whcih is why the $1k Sony Blu-Ray player should move pretty well too.
I fail to see how that translates to a lack of demand for hd-dvd.
That is also very true and why the large majority of studio support for Blu-Ray is part of the equation I listed for success.
Both formats have a good array of major studios on the "supporting" list.
With Blu-Ray drives being in Every PS3 I believe we'll see unit cost on Blu-Ray players and burners drop faster than with HD-DVD units.
If Sony were the sole supplier of bluray components, that might be a reasonable supposition.
Yes but they get much more money from HD-DVD because again, the menuing system is licenced from them. That means money for every disc sold vs. every player sold - Microsoft only gets per disc income off discs that actually use the MS codec.
"much more"? I doubt it, though if you have any hard details I'd be interested in seeing them. iHD was developed by a group of companies including Microsoft, Disney, and the DVD Forum.
Regarding codecs, Microsoft gets a piece of the pie for every player sold. Every HD-DVD and BluRay player must obtain a license for VC1 codec, otherwise they aren't compliant players. I do not believe Microsoft gets per disc income, though they do receive income from the authoring tools used to create VC1 content.
That same requirement is in the Blu-Ray spec.
Managed copy is a feature provided by AACS, which is used for content protection by both hd-dvd and bluray. The "bit" which enables that functionality is optional on blu-ray discs. It is mandatory on hd-dvd discs.
What is less expensive? HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs are selling for the same price on Amazon. As we all know movie prices are totally unrelated to media costs anyway. As noted blank HD-DVD discs cost more than blank Blu-Ray discs.
The technology required to produce HD-DVD discs and players is less expensive than bluray discs and players. How various companies choose to set retail prices is another story. If the retail prices are the same, companies producing HD-DVD related products are pulling in more money than companies producing bluray products.
We'll see combo players in a few years that do both.
It was my understanding that the bluray license explicitely prohibits manufactures from producing a combo bluray+hddvd player. At least that's the reason a Samsung rep gave for the cancellation of their combo player.
I don't see any better upgrade potential with HD-DVD but
It allows you to continue purchasing dvd's and have an instant library of hi-def content when you finally purchase a hi-def player.
but there is potentially more storage to be had out of Blu-Ray eventually.
The storage isn't necessary for movies.
So you are claiming HD-DVD is a better buy, but are not actually going to buy a player or media.
I'm saying from my perspective, if I had to make a purchase, that's the one I'd be looking at. In much the same manner that I'd purchase a Ferrari F430 before getting a Lambo Giardo.
over a format with theoretical advantages which no-one actually buys!
I find it hard to justify making such a statement when the manufacturer of said product can't produce enough to keep up with demand.
Perhaps because you want a disc player with a user interface that isn't a pile of turd? Every built-into-a-console dvd player I've ever used has been a piece of junk and has had serious issues with video quality...
* People buy a PS3 to play games first and play movies second. * Content matters more than format (both in the quality of titles available and the quality of video/audio on said titles) * You don't need 25gb to store a hi-def movie using next-gen codecs * Toshiba has sold every HD-DVD player that they've brought out over here * Commitments from studios matter less than the content actually made available * There is no "20gb" HD-DVD disc * 2-layer HD-DVD burners are available (30gb), while only single layer bluray burners are available (25gb) * Microsoft gets money from both bluray and HD-DVD (their codec is in both standards); they're backing HD-DVD because it has more consumer friendly features than blu-ray (including a mandatory managed copy requirement), is less expensive, and has a better upgrade scenario (HD-DVD on one side, DVD on the other side). To me, these are good reasons to choose HD-DVD over bluray, if I were in a position to care about either format (I don't plan to purchase either in the next 5 years).
I'll second that. Awhile back there was a big broohaha about how Hotmail was going to crank up the sensativity of spam filters run on mail from domains without SPF records.
For client apps? Hardly. This stuff started surfacing around 2002. In the year 2000, everyone was using Windows 98. Even the running joke around here is that you're safer using Win98 than XP.
.Net doesn't guarantee security. You might as well say "I though any program I wrote in.Net wouldn't have bugs." You won't have buffer overflows, but that is merely a small class of bugs you need to be concerned about..Net is fine for large projects. If you can't understand that there are factors external to the language and environment then you have no business making judgements in the first place.
Regarding weight, when accounting for the weight of batteries, you fail to consider the combined weight of engine + fuel. Electric motors are significantly lighter than gas motors. A full tank of gas also weighs a few hundred lbs. Electric vehicles also have fewer heavy parts to turn than an internal combusion engine, also reducing effective mass. In the end, weight isn't a large factor.
Combined turbine plants hit efficiencies of 60%.
If you must consider trasmission losses of a power plant (about 7-8%) and losses charging a battery (17-40% depending on battery type), you must also consider losses incurred by an internal combusion engine when idling (~18%) and driveline losses (8-12%). If you want to be really anal, you should also consider energy lost while braking (~30% of energy can be recovered) and energy lost driving "gas related" accessories (alternator, etc). To be fair, we should also consider the efficiency of an electric motor, which has losses around 6%.
If you assume your power plant is 60% efficient, loses 8% on the line, your batteries lose 40% of the remaining energy while charging/discharging, and lose an additional 6% while converting that energy to mechanism energy, and pick 30% of it back up when slowing down (losing 40% of that recharging the batteries), you have an overall efficiency of 36%. Which is still better than your internal combusion engine efficiency before considering driveline and idle losses.
A 50% efficient power plant yields a worst case net efficiency of 30%, still ahead of the internal combusion engine (if you if ignore idle losses, they're almost equal).
A 40% efficient power plant yields a worst case net efficiency of 24%, roughly equal to the net efficiency of an internal combusion engine.
No waiver with a customer would release GM from it's obligations under law. If they had sold a single one of those cars, they'd have to (among other things) produce an adequate supply of OEM replacement parts for something on the order of 10 years.
Just about every progressive HDTV out there (still) has an internal refresh rate of 60hz. You're going to get cadence problems with any 24fps source material, telecined or not.
Yes but you're allowed to spread losses over time, which they would do to offset income generated from the consoles. I trust in what you are saying (a rarity on the internet I know) but I just interpret the numbers differently.
If you look at their quarterly reports, you'll discover that Sony reports R&D expenses as they're incurred. The latest report ( http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/05q4_ sony.pdf ) even has a sentence indicating the impact of PS3 R&D on operating income reported for that quarter.
But the content will be out there, it's arriving June 20th in fact (according to Amazon). And some of the titles are kind of compelling, like Terminiator and T2. By the time of the PS3 launch there should be quite a few more titles out and I can see some bundles with the PS3 and a free Blu-Ray movie to gain some traction on that front. So I think my the time of the PS3 launch Blu-Ray will be a part of tha tequation because Sony will make it so via marketing and product tie-ins.
You are correct in that the appeal of blu-ray players grows as available content rises. What is being proposed here is that the arrival of new content will be delayed along with the players (which seems more likely now that Samsung is also delaying their player). Reduced content availability lowers the general appeal of the blu-ray feature.
Heck, will stores even be stocking titles that nobody can play? Will movie companies be releasing more titles when nobody can play them?
As the launch date of the PS3 gets closer these questions will get resolved (we'll know if the titles are out there or not), but right now it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that there will be less content available than previously thought, which reduces the advantage of shipping with a blu-ray drive.
"Paid incident support is now available through July 11, 2006. Extended hotfix support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition ended on June 30, 2003. Extended hotfix support for Windows Millennium Edition ended on December 31, 2003. Online self-help support will continue to be available until at least July 10, 2007. For more information about the type and length of support provided, review the Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition Support Extended Announcement Web site. Critical security updates will be provided on the Windows Update site through July 11, 2006. Microsoft will not publicly release non-critical security hotfixes for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows Millennium Edition. However, customers may request a non-critical security hotfix through On-Demand Security Hotfix support. This support is offered for these products through July 11, 2006. When a request is received, Microsoft will investigate the issue and try to provide an appropriate response to the customer."
The latest back-compat "package" is smaller than 4mb (for all 200+ games). Unless the average xbox game is 20k in size, they aren't recompiling xbox games to run on the 360. There are a number of other reasons why it would be silly to suggest that they are doing such a thing (lack of source code being the primary factor), so do we really need to take this any further?
R&D costs are different than per-unit costs. The Playstation has never sold below the cost to make it, it's just a matter then of making back the R&D costs.
R&D costs are incurred before the console ships, not after. If you can find quarterly earnings statements from Sony between 2000 and 2001, look at their games division around the time the PS2 started to ship. You'll discover that they ended up roughly a billion dollars in the hole the first 2 quarters after the PS2 started shipping. They broke even in the 3rd quarter if I recall correctly, and have been raking it in ever since (there was a large dip in net income the quarter they launched in the US, but it didn't hit negative figures).
Unfortunately, Sony doesn't have those earnings statements available on their website any longer (I couldn't find them this time). So you can either choose to believe me or call me a liar. If you choose to call me a liar but lack data to prove me otherwise, we'll have to agree to disagree and move on.
But it's not that simple because the Blu-Ray aspect does enter into the equation regardless - I know it does for me.
For you, you ALREADY want a blu-ray player, so in this case it is still icing on the cake. For someone else comparing features between consoles, it isn't going to be as big of a factor if the content isn't already out there.
We're not talking in absolutes here, we're talking shades of grey. The delay in content makes the shade of grey darker than it was before. I'm having trouble expressing my thought clearly, but hopefully I'm getting my point across.:)
That quote isn't entirely true -- game companies do have some pull in determining what games get bc work done. The game company can "fund" the development work to make a game backwards compatible, but so far (from my understanding) no game company has chosen to do so.
1) Really? So those negative balance figures on Sony's balance sheet surrounding the launch of the PS1 and PS2 are a myths? Their forward looking statements anticipating losses due to selling the hardware at a loss are made up?
They make money over the lifetime of the console, but historically Sony's game hardware has been sold at a loss when first released. Yes, Sony movies will make Sony money, but that goes towards the bottom line of their movie business, not their console business.
2) You're missing the point. There is no blu-ray market without blu-ray players. Which means when people are making a decision about which GAME CONSOLE to buy, the ability to play non-existant blu-ray movies isn't a factor.
I mean pro as in "pro"/"con" (advantage/disadvantage). I would also point out that just because something isn't in the "pro" column doesn't mean it is in the "con" column. It means that it isn't even on the list of things to consider.
An anology would be a Sony TV that has a memory stick slot somewhere on the back (yes, there are Sony TVs that have memory stick slots on the REAR of the set). It isn't going to keep you from buying the TV, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who bought a TV BECAUSE it had a memory stick slot on the rear of the set. It might be a nice bonus if at some future time I find myself with a memory stick and need a way to view the pictures on it but it doesn't enter the equation when choosing between multiple TVs.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect the GP is misinterpreting "sides" of a disc for "layers".
0 6/20060605081322171_P1000_XAA_BK_0602.pdf
http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/2006
Page 8 of the English manual, in the "Disc Type and Characteristics" section, you'll find a list of disc types the player supports.
In the first row, support for BD-ROM, BD-RE, and BD-R is listed for "AUDIO+VIDEO", with the disc shape listed as "Single sided".
In the DVD-VIDEO row, you'll see 4 entries:
* Single sided (5 inches)
* Double sided (5 inches)
* Single sided (3 1/2 inches)
* Double sided (3 1/2 inches)
So the HD-DVD movies are almost out of space as it is and there seems to be no space savings at all in using MP4 over MP2. And it seems that space is at more of a premium than we had thought, with Blu-Ray having a distinct edge once dual layer discs arrive.
You're ignoring a few critical details: bitrate and quality.
If you take a 6gb dvd encoded with mpeg2, you can encode it at the same quality using 2gb of space.
I could encode a bluray movie in 2gb, but it would look like crap. It in no way means that the new codecs are somehow yielding poorer results than mpeg2. Given two files of equal size, one encoded with mpeg4 or vc1, and one encoded with mpeg2, the mpeg4/vc1 file will be closer to the source material than the mpeg2 file.
The logical response to your observation is that the final size of the encoded video is being dictated by the total amount of content provided on the disc, not by the amount of space available.
That's terrific, for you. But not everyone is satisfied with that sort of solution. Which explains why someone would choose a standalone player over a PS3.
Now the other side of the coin you are not thinking of is POTENTIAL market
If that were the only factor, UMDs would have taken off.
You are not thinking of the many extras that might be included, like many two disc sets collapsing for one - very appealing for those that rent movies as there is no longer a second disc they'll never see.
I don't think you have much of a sense for how much space a hi-def movie requires with next gen codecs; a standard def dvd that normally takes 6gb can be shrunk to 2gb. Hi-def content contains 6x as much data. If you assume that the size of the compressed file increases linearly with the amount of data (which would be a worse case) you're looking at 12gb for a hi-def movie.
Easy in an early market when you have low production rates. There are always early adoptors that will buy in at any price with any number of problems, whcih is why the $1k Sony Blu-Ray player should move pretty well too.
I fail to see how that translates to a lack of demand for hd-dvd.
That is also very true and why the large majority of studio support for Blu-Ray is part of the equation I listed for success.
Both formats have a good array of major studios on the "supporting" list.
With Blu-Ray drives being in Every PS3 I believe we'll see unit cost on Blu-Ray players and burners drop faster than with HD-DVD units.
If Sony were the sole supplier of bluray components, that might be a reasonable supposition.
Yes but they get much more money from HD-DVD because again, the menuing system is licenced from them. That means money for every disc sold vs. every player sold - Microsoft only gets per disc income off discs that actually use the MS codec.
"much more"? I doubt it, though if you have any hard details I'd be interested in seeing them. iHD was developed by a group of companies including Microsoft, Disney, and the DVD Forum.
Regarding codecs, Microsoft gets a piece of the pie for every player sold. Every HD-DVD and BluRay player must obtain a license for VC1 codec, otherwise they aren't compliant players. I do not believe Microsoft gets per disc income, though they do receive income from the authoring tools used to create VC1 content.
That same requirement is in the Blu-Ray spec.
Managed copy is a feature provided by AACS, which is used for content protection by both hd-dvd and bluray. The "bit" which enables that functionality is optional on blu-ray discs. It is mandatory on hd-dvd discs.
What is less expensive? HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs are selling for the same price on Amazon. As we all know movie prices are totally unrelated to media costs anyway. As noted blank HD-DVD discs cost more than blank Blu-Ray discs.
The technology required to produce HD-DVD discs and players is less expensive than bluray discs and players. How various companies choose to set retail prices is another story. If the retail prices are the same, companies producing HD-DVD related products are pulling in more money than companies producing bluray products.
We'll see combo players in a few years that do both.
It was my understanding that the bluray license explicitely prohibits manufactures from producing a combo bluray+hddvd player. At least that's the reason a Samsung rep gave for the cancellation of their combo player.
I don't see any better upgrade potential with HD-DVD but
It allows you to continue purchasing dvd's and have an instant library of hi-def content when you finally purchase a hi-def player.
but there is potentially more storage to be had out of Blu-Ray eventually.
The storage isn't necessary for movies.
So you are claiming HD-DVD is a better buy, but are not actually going to buy a player or media.
I'm saying from my perspective, if I had to make a purchase, that's the one I'd be looking at. In much the same manner that I'd purchase a Ferrari F430 before getting a Lambo Giardo.
over a format with theoretical advantages which no-one actually buys!
I find it hard to justify making such a statement when the manufacturer of said product can't produce enough to keep up with demand.
Perhaps because you want a disc player with a user interface that isn't a pile of turd? Every built-into-a-console dvd player I've ever used has been a piece of junk and has had serious issues with video quality ...
* People buy a PS3 to play games first and play movies second.
* Content matters more than format (both in the quality of titles available and the quality of video/audio on said titles)
* You don't need 25gb to store a hi-def movie using next-gen codecs
* Toshiba has sold every HD-DVD player that they've brought out over here
* Commitments from studios matter less than the content actually made available
* There is no "20gb" HD-DVD disc
* 2-layer HD-DVD burners are available (30gb), while only single layer bluray burners are available (25gb)
* Microsoft gets money from both bluray and HD-DVD (their codec is in both standards); they're backing HD-DVD because it has more consumer friendly features than blu-ray (including a mandatory managed copy requirement), is less expensive, and has a better upgrade scenario (HD-DVD on one side, DVD on the other side). To me, these are good reasons to choose HD-DVD over bluray, if I were in a position to care about either format (I don't plan to purchase either in the next 5 years).
I'll second that. Awhile back there was a big broohaha about how Hotmail was going to crank up the sensativity of spam filters run on mail from domains without SPF records.
What's the point of posting on a website not under your control?
For client apps? Hardly. This stuff started surfacing around 2002. In the year 2000, everyone was using Windows 98. Even the running joke around here is that you're safer using Win98 than XP.
.Net doesn't guarantee security. You might as well say "I though any program I wrote in .Net wouldn't have bugs." You won't have buffer overflows, but that is merely a small class of bugs you need to be concerned about. .Net is fine for large projects. If you can't understand that there are factors external to the language and environment then you have no business making judgements in the first place.
Regarding weight, when accounting for the weight of batteries, you fail to consider the combined weight of engine + fuel. Electric motors are significantly lighter than gas motors. A full tank of gas also weighs a few hundred lbs. Electric vehicles also have fewer heavy parts to turn than an internal combusion engine, also reducing effective mass. In the end, weight isn't a large factor.
Combined turbine plants hit efficiencies of 60%.
If you must consider trasmission losses of a power plant (about 7-8%) and losses charging a battery (17-40% depending on battery type), you must also consider losses incurred by an internal combusion engine when idling (~18%) and driveline losses (8-12%). If you want to be really anal, you should also consider energy lost while braking (~30% of energy can be recovered) and energy lost driving "gas related" accessories (alternator, etc). To be fair, we should also consider the efficiency of an electric motor, which has losses around 6%.
If you assume your power plant is 60% efficient, loses 8% on the line, your batteries lose 40% of the remaining energy while charging/discharging, and lose an additional 6% while converting that energy to mechanism energy, and pick 30% of it back up when slowing down (losing 40% of that recharging the batteries), you have an overall efficiency of 36%. Which is still better than your internal combusion engine efficiency before considering driveline and idle losses.
A 50% efficient power plant yields a worst case net efficiency of 30%, still ahead of the internal combusion engine (if you if ignore idle losses, they're almost equal).
A 40% efficient power plant yields a worst case net efficiency of 24%, roughly equal to the net efficiency of an internal combusion engine.
Not quite as bad as you thought, is it?
No waiver with a customer would release GM from it's obligations under law. If they had sold a single one of those cars, they'd have to (among other things) produce an adequate supply of OEM replacement parts for something on the order of 10 years.
Sony's 2006 lineup of SXRD displays will take 1080p inputs. They're due to start hitting stores in July...
There is also no "SXBR" either.
There is SXRD, which is Sony's version of LCoS. Then there is the XBR line, which is generally Sony's "higher end video snob" label.
There is an XBR line with an SXRD based display though.
Just about every progressive HDTV out there (still) has an internal refresh rate of 60hz. You're going to get cadence problems with any 24fps source material, telecined or not.
From the data that would normally be thrown away outputting a normal NTSC signal (dvds are encoded at 720x480 using non-square pixel aspect ratios).
Good lord man, it was a joke. I fully acknowledge that I may not be as funny as I think I am, but geeze...
Yes but you're allowed to spread losses over time, which they would do to offset income generated from the consoles. I trust in what you are saying (a rarity on the internet I know) but I just interpret the numbers differently.
_ sony.pdf ) even has a sentence indicating the impact of PS3 R&D on operating income reported for that quarter.
If you look at their quarterly reports, you'll discover that Sony reports R&D expenses as they're incurred. The latest report ( http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/05q4
But the content will be out there, it's arriving June 20th in fact (according to Amazon). And some of the titles are kind of compelling, like Terminiator and T2. By the time of the PS3 launch there should be quite a few more titles out and I can see some bundles with the PS3 and a free Blu-Ray movie to gain some traction on that front. So I think my the time of the PS3 launch Blu-Ray will be a part of tha tequation because Sony will make it so via marketing and product tie-ins.
You are correct in that the appeal of blu-ray players grows as available content rises. What is being proposed here is that the arrival of new content will be delayed along with the players (which seems more likely now that Samsung is also delaying their player). Reduced content availability lowers the general appeal of the blu-ray feature.
Heck, will stores even be stocking titles that nobody can play? Will movie companies be releasing more titles when nobody can play them?
As the launch date of the PS3 gets closer these questions will get resolved (we'll know if the titles are out there or not), but right now it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that there will be less content available than previously thought, which reduces the advantage of shipping with a blu-ray drive.
Not quite; you have to purchase an expensive dongle before you can run OS X.
"Paid incident support is now available through July 11, 2006. Extended hotfix support for Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition ended on June 30, 2003. Extended hotfix support for Windows Millennium Edition ended on December 31, 2003. Online self-help support will continue to be available until at least July 10, 2007. For more information about the type and length of support provided, review the Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Millennium Edition Support Extended Announcement Web site. Critical security updates will be provided on the Windows Update site through July 11, 2006. Microsoft will not publicly release non-critical security hotfixes for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows Millennium Edition. However, customers may request a non-critical security hotfix through On-Demand Security Hotfix support. This support is offered for these products through July 11, 2006. When a request is received, Microsoft will investigate the issue and try to provide an appropriate response to the customer."
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=6519
Get your facts straight.
The last emulator "update" was 4mb...
The latest back-compat "package" is smaller than 4mb (for all 200+ games). Unless the average xbox game is 20k in size, they aren't recompiling xbox games to run on the 360. There are a number of other reasons why it would be silly to suggest that they are doing such a thing (lack of source code being the primary factor), so do we really need to take this any further?
R&D costs are different than per-unit costs. The Playstation has never sold below the cost to make it, it's just a matter then of making back the R&D costs.
:)
R&D costs are incurred before the console ships, not after. If you can find quarterly earnings statements from Sony between 2000 and 2001, look at their games division around the time the PS2 started to ship. You'll discover that they ended up roughly a billion dollars in the hole the first 2 quarters after the PS2 started shipping. They broke even in the 3rd quarter if I recall correctly, and have been raking it in ever since (there was a large dip in net income the quarter they launched in the US, but it didn't hit negative figures).
Unfortunately, Sony doesn't have those earnings statements available on their website any longer (I couldn't find them this time). So you can either choose to believe me or call me a liar. If you choose to call me a liar but lack data to prove me otherwise, we'll have to agree to disagree and move on.
But it's not that simple because the Blu-Ray aspect does enter into the equation regardless - I know it does for me.
For you, you ALREADY want a blu-ray player, so in this case it is still icing on the cake. For someone else comparing features between consoles, it isn't going to be as big of a factor if the content isn't already out there.
We're not talking in absolutes here, we're talking shades of grey. The delay in content makes the shade of grey darker than it was before. I'm having trouble expressing my thought clearly, but hopefully I'm getting my point across.
That quote isn't entirely true -- game companies do have some pull in determining what games get bc work done. The game company can "fund" the development work to make a game backwards compatible, but so far (from my understanding) no game company has chosen to do so.
1) Really? So those negative balance figures on Sony's balance sheet surrounding the launch of the PS1 and PS2 are a myths? Their forward looking statements anticipating losses due to selling the hardware at a loss are made up?
They make money over the lifetime of the console, but historically Sony's game hardware has been sold at a loss when first released. Yes, Sony movies will make Sony money, but that goes towards the bottom line of their movie business, not their console business.
2) You're missing the point. There is no blu-ray market without blu-ray players. Which means when people are making a decision about which GAME CONSOLE to buy, the ability to play non-existant blu-ray movies isn't a factor.
I mean pro as in "pro"/"con" (advantage/disadvantage). I would also point out that just because something isn't in the "pro" column doesn't mean it is in the "con" column. It means that it isn't even on the list of things to consider.
An anology would be a Sony TV that has a memory stick slot somewhere on the back (yes, there are Sony TVs that have memory stick slots on the REAR of the set). It isn't going to keep you from buying the TV, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who bought a TV BECAUSE it had a memory stick slot on the rear of the set. It might be a nice bonus if at some future time I find myself with a memory stick and need a way to view the pictures on it but it doesn't enter the equation when choosing between multiple TVs.
If that were true, the updates would be MUCH larger than a few mb.