To be fair, the 350$ purported cost of the BR drive in the PS3 was a February '06 thing. Even though I still think that has been an excessively doom-and-gloom-driven estimate, not least because PS3 manufacturing didn't actually take place in Feb, it's plausible that healthy improvements have been made in the ten months that have since passed. Only a select few tightly corked bottles did call the cost higher at all, ever, and that always involved not getting the difference between a)the retail price of a full-fledged standalone player and b)the cost of a drive. IOW ML made their contribution to the pile, but they did not climb to the peak of insanity.
I don't recall servo stuff being brought up as a cost concern and can only offer guesses but it should be noted that the cost issues with the blue laser diode are in an entirely different league than mere motorization. New material compositions and fabrication processes needed to be researched to change the laser's wavelength, while a servo motor can be physically scaled to change its characteristics. It's not nearly as hard.
Anecdotal: some hard drives retail for as low as 25$, and there got to be comparable motors in there.
