Practically every HT geek and most with HDTVs will probably buy a PS3 if it launches at $300 and standalone blue-laser players and recorders, whether they're Blu-Ray or HD-DVD are above $500.
There are at least 13 million HDTV owners now and there will be another 10 million by the end of 2005.
So by the time the PS3 launches there will be about 25 million HDTV displays. That's in the US alone.
You can bet that many of the first PS3s bought will be by people with HDTVs.
In fact, there's a lot of overlap already between gamers and videophiles. Check hdtvarcade.com. Even though HDTV support on the Xbox is nominal, there are a lot of gamers who bought HDTVs just to get 480p and 16:9 support from the minority of games which support it.
And these aren't just the $600 27-inch Sanyos that people are buying. A lot of them are getting DLP and plasmas. You see, the gamer profile is no longer the teen saving up money from his paper route to buy a console and a few games. That was the profile in the '80s.
Now, those guys have grown up, went to college, got professional jobs, raising families now. All through that time, they gamed and they continue to game because it's comparatively good entertainment compared to the Internet, movies and TV, even though these gamers are also interested in those as well.
Even non-gamers who own nice displays will get the PS3 for Blu-Ray as well as CG in games which are running at HDTV resolutions.
If the PS3 and any other console which supports HDTV resolutions in either games or movies require a special cable accessory (like the Xbox HD Pack or component cables), there will be a high tie ratio between consoles sold and such accessories. My guess is they will have to support DVI or HDMI termination and those will sell very well, at least a 70% tie ratio.
That will tell you that people are indeed hooking up consoles to HDTVs.
