Blu-ray and ps3.

[jvd]

don't u hate that function haha

 

[Psychogenics]

Mass production and the maturing of technology will of course drop the price of piece of technology, but what are we saying here, that a $3,000 part is going to be reduced to $60 (an entirely arbitrary figure) in a little over two years time?

Making a console is about balancing the cost of all your parts to give optimal performance. I don't know how much it's going to cost Sony to include BR in a console to launch in late 2005, but much above what it cost them to include DVD on the PS2 it must start having a big impact on the functionality of other areas of the platform.

The benefit that BR would provide to games over increased memory, more bandwidth or faster processors is questionable. Additional processing power can benefit every frame of a game, where as the advantage of not having to swap a disk is far more limited. It's not like the situation where the first N64 games came on 8 meg carts, while CD's offered 90 times the storage (unlimited, if you include disk swapping) at a fraction of the cost.

The comparisons of the benefits of BR vs hard drives are interesting.

While the infinite storage offered by any changeable media is nothing to sniff at, it's important for technology enthusiast not to forget the value of a black box that typical users can just turn on and forget about.

Making the running of feature rich machines as transparent as possible is one aim of consumer device manufacturers. Downloading updates and patches without troubling the user for a disk is one way to make this happen. It also makes it easier to control the material that consumers download - while it's on the box (be it movies or music) it's at the mercy of the content providers. And there's less likely to be the asking of questions like "why is this music that I downloaded to this disk not playable on my friends PS3."

Hard disks are already going beyond 240 Gigs, by late 2005 I expect they'll be double that. BR will make a great technology for a future PSX style device that's based on the PS3, but I think for the moment hard drives offer a greater "mass storage" benefit to games consoles (especially when you take into account the cost implications). And I think that's still the primary concern with what will be the PS3 (at least initially).

NOTE: when I started typing this the last half a dozen posts weren't there! Damned if I'm gonna scrap this post now though ...

Edited more than once, because it takes me several attempts to proof read my own writing.

Many Developers and People thought the same with Dvds on the PS2.....But in the end its up to Sony and I pretty much think that they will not stick to just DVD medium,they will introduce something new and more reliable.....they don't want PS3 to have the DRe problems of PS2...DVD technology is far from perfect and thats why it is sooo cheap right now....

 

[jvd]

Psychogenics dvd was cheap before ps2 came out. When ps2 came out you could get a good dvd player for 200 bucks . Which isvery cheap.
So you see the dvd player was already being mass produced and it had been for a year before the release of the ps2. The blue ray is not being mass produced and its not even picking up steam yet. So really thblueay would count on the ps3 at this point and bloat the price to epic numbers . Where as dvd was already a run away success which many will argue that its what propelled the ps2 to its current success and not the other way around .

Just wanted to add wtf are you talking about that dvd is so cheap because its far from perfect. It would be the otherway around . If the drivers kept breaking and what not it be more expensive to manufacture. Sony just uses extremly cheap drives in the ps2 .

 

[Vince]

Do you people really think the sum cost of that Blu-Ray recorder equals $3,000...

Appearently this forum isn't upto this discussion if you can't clearly see this is a commodity with high profit multiples due to it's first of class position.

 

[jvd]

Do you people really think the sum cost of that Blu-Ray recorder equals $3,000...

Appearently this forum isn't upto this discussion if you can't clearly see this is a commodity with high profit multiples due to it's first of class position.

we all know it doesn't cost 3grand to make . We all know it costs more than 100. Most likely around 400-500 bucks.

 

[Psychogenics]

Psychogenics dvd was cheap before ps2 came out. When ps2 came out you could get a good dvd player for 200 bucks . Which isvery cheap.
So you see the dvd player was already being mass produced and it had been for a year before the release of the ps2. The blue ray is not being mass produced and its not even picking up steam yet. So really thblueay would count on the ps3 at this point and bloat the price to epic numbers . Where as dvd was already a run away success which many will argue that its what propelled the ps2 to its current success and not the other way around .

Just wanted to add wtf are you talking about that dvd is so cheap because its far from perfect. It would be the otherway around . If the drivers kept breaking and what not it be more expensive to manufacture. Sony just uses extremly cheap drives in the ps2 .

Good but not from Sony,,,As I remember Sony-Toshiba-JVc all had 400+ DVD players at the time...MAybe the 2x were 200 but the 4x were at the very least 350+

 

[Vince]

We all know it doesn't cost 3grand to make . We all know it costs more than 100. Most likely around 400-500 bucks.

Ok, so $500 (your figure) in 2003 based on low-volume production for an entry position in the high-end electronics market. This is the first product based on the technology, which is 99.995% guaranateed to be the de facto next generation optical standard.

You're telling me that Adam Smith can't show that the increase in production from the low single thousands in 2003 by one vendor to over 10 vendors in 2005 with volume much, much higher won't manifest itself in drastically lower production costs? The fab/production lines are a fixed cost; producing 50X the number in 2004 will just scale the costs linearly down from the 2003 production number @ $500 into the sub-100 range. This is basic macroeconomic theory, I think they teach economies of scale the first week.

Give me a break... this reoccuring "massive" cost theme concerning PS3 has outlived it's plausbility.

 

[jvd]

Psychogenics dvd was cheap before ps2 came out. When ps2 came out you could get a good dvd player for 200 bucks . Which isvery cheap.
So you see the dvd player was already being mass produced and it had been for a year before the release of the ps2. The blue ray is not being mass produced and its not even picking up steam yet. So really thblueay would count on the ps3 at this point and bloat the price to epic numbers . Where as dvd was already a run away success which many will argue that its what propelled the ps2 to its current success and not the other way around .

Just wanted to add wtf are you talking about that dvd is so cheap because its far from perfect. It would be the otherway around . If the drivers kept breaking and what not it be more expensive to manufacture. Sony just uses extremly cheap drives in the ps2 .

Good but not from Sony,,,As I remember Sony-Toshiba-JVc all had 400+ DVD players at the time...MAybe the 2x were 200 but the 4x were at the very least 350+

Well I got my first household dvd player in 1999 for 300 with a doby 5.1 decoder. IT was a sony. It stoped working 8 months later and they wanted 150 to fix it. My father bought a panisonic for 200$ at the end of 2000. So yea there were tv players for that price. The dvd drivers were also that cheap. I have an 8x drive in my pc that cost 250$ in 2000.

 

[Psychogenics]

[

Good but not from Sony,,,As I remember Sony-Toshiba-JVc all had 400+ DVD players at the time...MAybe the 2x were 200 but the 4x were at the very least 350+

Well I got my first household dvd player in 1999 for 300 with a doby 5.1 decoder. IT was a sony. It stoped working 8 months later and they wanted 150 to fix it. My father bought a panisonic for 200$ at the end of 2000. So yea there were tv players for that price. The dvd drivers were also that cheap. I have an 8x drive in my pc that cost 250$ in 2000.[/quote]

Again it was a 2x because Sony had the 4x at 350+ and that PC DVD drive was it Sony?Because sony was still one of the most expensive equipment money could buy.Especially back then.Anyway since then Sony is out to make itself more known for their creativity on products and decided to make them multi-function products much like the PS2....Realistically BR has a 60-40 chance of making it to the PS3....But if it doesn't I see Sony dropping that Medium and supporting something else that might even be better for the PS3 much like those UMDs that the PSP has......If sony drops it it will drop it for some other storage median that will hold more for less money.

 

[jvd]

[

Good but not from Sony,,,As I remember Sony-Toshiba-JVc all had 400+ DVD players at the time...MAybe the 2x were 200 but the 4x were at the very least 350+

Well I got my first household dvd player in 1999 for 300 with a doby 5.1 decoder. IT was a sony. It stoped working 8 months later and they wanted 150 to fix it. My father bought a panisonic for 200$ at the end of 2000. So yea there were tv players for that price. The dvd drivers were also that cheap. I have an 8x drive in my pc that cost 250$ in 2000.

Again it was a 2x because Sony had the 4x at 350+ and that PC DVD drive was it Sony?Because sony was still one of the most expensive equipment money could buy.Especially back then.Anyway since then Sony is out to make itself more known for their creativity on products and decided to make them multi-function products much like the PS2....Realistically BR has a 60-40 chance of making it to the PS3....But if it doesn't I see Sony dropping that Medium and supporting something else that might even be better for the PS3 much like those UMDs that the PSP has......If sony drops it it will drop it for some other storage median that will hold more for less money.[/quote]

The pc drive was toshiba . Still is . I'm staring at it right now .

Seriously the price diffrence is huge and the push was much bigger for dvd than blue ray. I say there is a 80% chance that there will be a dvd player in the ps3. And i mean why not its so dirt cheap. They can put a 52 speed dvd drive in for pennies . Compared to the cost of the blueray. They could also throw in a 200gig hardrive or so for dirt cheap too. I don't see why it must be blue ray in the ps3. No one has given one good reason why.

 

[function]

Do you people really think the sum cost of that Blu-Ray recorder equals $3,000...

Appearently this forum isn't upto this discussion if you can't clearly see this is a commodity with high profit multiples due to it's first of class position.

Really, no need for such a dismissive attiude.

The precise manufacturing price of BR right now isn't actually the point, just the notion that it's currently far, far too expensive to include in a mass market games console, and that some people doubt it will drop to such a level by the end of 2005.

I happen to think that retail prices are useful indicators of the technology that might be integrated into consoles in the future. Looking at the path that CD drives and DVD drives have taken to console integration, it appears (to me) that Sony would struggle to get BR down to an acceptable price by 2005. The principles of economies of scales were, of course, relevant in the 80's and 90's too when CD and DVD drives were increasing in popularity.

BTW, there is also some discussion about at what price level the compromises needed to include BR will become acceptable, and it's pro's and cons vs alternatives. Both of these are more interesting topics, IMO, than simply the rate at which BR prices will decline.


Just to add my two pence to people talking about their history with DVD drives, I got my PC drive in 1998. It's a 4 x made by Toshiba, and I think it went for about £120 - £150 (which would be about $150 - $190 if you disregard VAT). Brilliant drive BTW, still going strong.

 

[notAFanB]

Seriously the price diffrence is huge and the push was much bigger for dvd than blue ray. I say there is a 80% chance that there will be a dvd player in the ps3. And i mean why not its so dirt cheap. They can put a 52 speed dvd drive in for pennies . Compared to the cost of the blueray. They could also throw in a 200gig hardrive or so for dirt cheap too. I don't see why it must be blue ray in the ps3. No one has given one good reason why.

*Shrugs*

maybe they are thinking long term. or they want more than a games console out there.

 

[jvd]

Seriously the price diffrence is huge and the push was much bigger for dvd than blue ray. I say there is a 80% chance that there will be a dvd player in the ps3. And i mean why not its so dirt cheap. They can put a 52 speed dvd drive in for pennies . Compared to the cost of the blueray. They could also throw in a 200gig hardrive or so for dirt cheap too. I don't see why it must be blue ray in the ps3. No one has given one good reason why.

*Shrugs*

maybe they are thinking long term. or they want more than a games console out there.

True but how much money are they willing to loose on the console . I'm all for blueray in everything but not if its going to drive up costs taht much.

 

[notAFanB]

I don't think (though it's fun to speculate) you nor I can acertain just how much investment they are willing to pump into this. looking at microsoft and the agreessive competetive trend in the console spce BR might be and added incentive.

then again they could bankrupt themselves......

 

[jvd]

I don't think (though it's fun to speculate) you nor I can acertain just how much investment they are willing to pump into this. looking at microsoft and the agreessive competetive trend in the console spce BR might be and added incentive.

then again they could bankrupt themselves......

then again they may feel that an extra 100 bucks is better spent on a faster chip or more ram instead of blueray .

 

[notAFanB]

then again they may feel that an extra 100 bucks is better spent on a faster chip or more ram instead of blueray .

thats fair from an engineering point of view (and one I share), however how does that give it the initiaitive over the competetion?

 

[jvd]

then again they may feel that an extra 100 bucks is better spent on a faster chip or more ram instead of blueray .

thats fair from an engineering point of view (and one I share), however how does that give it the initiaitive over the competetion?

If the faster chip or more ram is enough to take the spec crown away from ms or nintendo that will certianly help them.

 

[notAFanB]

I do not value the spec crown as a marketing tool (specially in this coming generation) as highly as you do, lets leave it at that.

 

[Psychogenics]

Br would give Sony 3-4yrs of anti-pricacy......Since the cost of Blu-ray would be expensive it would make it difficult for the adverage joe to make Back-ups and sell them.

 

[Vince]

The precise manufacturing price of BR right now isn't actually the point, just the notion that it's currently far, far too expensive to include in a mass market games console, and that some people doubt it will drop to such a level by the end of 2005.

I'm dismissive because people are posting things like this... I can't understand it, literally. I'm trying hard here - it's just so illogical and ignorant.

What your saying is that the actual material costs are irrelevent and that the MSRP of a bleeding-edge technology isin anyway related to the cost that will exist in two years when the commodity aspect wears off and there is a manufacturing/price war.

Are you going to tell me what the inflated cost of a 3.2Ghz Pentium4 (which is a commodity at this point) is in someway related to the manufacturing costs or the ability for the cost to scale down with increasing economies of scale? Because thats what you're saying...

It's insane.

I happen to think that retail prices are useful indicators of the technology that might be integrated into consoles in the future. Looking at the path that CD drives and DVD drives have taken to console integration, it appears (to me) that Sony would struggle to get BR down to an acceptable price by 2005.

OMG! XBox Next is screwed! The Pentium4 3.2Ghz is like $700 itself!! Can you imagine if they used this (or higher) in the XBox? It's never going to drop to the sub-$100 range if this keeps up! Thats like $400 of loss just on teh CPU!

It's a commodity at this point, get this into your head.

The principles of economies of scales were, of course, relevant in the 80's and 90's too when CD and DVD drives were increasing in popularity.

Exactly, and look at the extravgent initial prices that drop like a rock at the first hint of competition.