Those critical of the PlayStation 3’s price often point to the Blu-ray Drive components: not only has the inclusion driven up the bill of materials cost, it’s also much to blame for the initial shortage of consoles at launch and the delayed release into Europe and Australia. “The blue laser diode, as you well know, had a blip short-term ramp up issue, which is now past; that's now behind us. That did cause us some challenges in being able to supply the launch worldwide, but that's all resolved,” said Phil Harrison, SCE Worldwide Studios, in a GameDaily interview.
Some consumers clamor on Internet forums that the Blu-ray Drive’s added cost is nothing but another effort for Sony to sneak its HD format into the homes of consumers. It cannot be removed and offered as an add-on of course, as PS3 games also run off of blue laser media. “We needed to have Blu-ray disc from a game design point of view. The chipsets in PS3 chew through data at such a rate that in order to build variety and detail and quality into the games, we need more than nine gigabytes. Now, the fact that we could also adopt the preeminent next generation movie format into PS3 was an added bonus, not an added cost,” Harrison added.
Sony remains confident in the decision: “No regrets whatsoever, and it's those kinds of decisions, painful though they were to live through in the last quarter of 2006, those are the decisions that are going to propel PlayStation 3 to be a platform that lasts for ten years, like we've seen with PS1 and PS2. And it will be, I believe, reflected on as the smartest decision we ever made,” Harrison said.
News source: DailyTech
Some consumers clamor on Internet forums that the Blu-ray Drive’s added cost is nothing but another effort for Sony to sneak its HD format into the homes of consumers. It cannot be removed and offered as an add-on of course, as PS3 games also run off of blue laser media. “We needed to have Blu-ray disc from a game design point of view. The chipsets in PS3 chew through data at such a rate that in order to build variety and detail and quality into the games, we need more than nine gigabytes. Now, the fact that we could also adopt the preeminent next generation movie format into PS3 was an added bonus, not an added cost,” Harrison added.
Sony remains confident in the decision: “No regrets whatsoever, and it's those kinds of decisions, painful though they were to live through in the last quarter of 2006, those are the decisions that are going to propel PlayStation 3 to be a platform that lasts for ten years, like we've seen with PS1 and PS2. And it will be, I believe, reflected on as the smartest decision we ever made,” Harrison said.
News source: DailyTech
Yeah, I agree. In perspective though, I'm waiting for the $100 360 price drop. Though, if the 20GB PS3 was $400, I'd totally get it. Kinda funny, no? I guess it's all about what's worth getting. And $400 for a 360 isn't it for me. :
Right now, the best use coming out for all that space is MPEG2 encoded FMVs and lazy data compression.
Fact is, they didn't need it, and neither do gamers.
It was a marketing decision to make the drive blu-ray, plain and simple.
"Sony announces that they will announce something, I mean anything, every day until PS3 starts selling."
SO watch out folks, this is not over yet...
"Sony announces that they will announce something, I mean anything, every day until PS3 starts selling."
SO watch out folks, this is not over yet...
hahhaa, sooo true
I disagree. I think the Wii will keep growing. Either way though, does it matter? Nintendo profit from every sale NOW. If it falls in 18 months, they've made money.
PS3 doesn't have the luxury of feeling secure like that. If they fail, the company could very well go with it.
So whats the plan then ? Keep loosing money for every console you sell (which you don't actually sell but anyway) in hopes that in 1.5 - 2 years from now you will start actually selling ? Now thats some quality business plan there.
If Nintendo rides the momentum and keeps selling like this until the end of this year they will just win this so called "next gen wars" thingy hands down. At this rate they will have a 20 million playerbase within one year. Game developers are not stupid. They make games to sell them. Wii sells, XBOX sells, their games for these consoles will sell. If you were a third party developer would you make games for Sony ? I doubt it. And lets not even discuss how difficult (and expensive) it is to make games for PS3 compared to the other two consoles.
As for the article...Sony doesn't exactly have the bar set high in the "smart decisions" category.
Im sure many households would rather just use bluray than ger a PS3 and a HD DVD player. The PS3 is pretty much guaranteed to sell so it gives sony a very large install base in their gaming systems alone.
The only people that suffer as a result are the owners of a PS3, who've had to pay the extra for the "privilege" of owning one and the developers who've had to store the same information repeatedly on the Disk in order to keep loading times down to the same as DVD.
If they chew through data so fast they shouldn't have used a drive that results in such horrible seek times that data needs to be duplicated several times over the disc just to make them acceptable.
It's the worst decision they made for the PS3.
They're forcing a drive on gamers that most gamers don't even care for and if you know anything about how blu-ray handles the games you'd see how much of a joke it is.
Sony should issue an apology and remove whatever PS3's are still sitting on shelves and give refunds to whoever bought one to be completely honest.
It's a joke of a system. I've even noticed some of the hardcore fans of it that are here on Neowin who did nothing but fight for it before it was out, are now wishing they never bought it or already got rid of it.
The fact is that 9GB is not enough for games of this generation. The 360 is giving content creators lots of difficulty.
Evidence:
"According to Game Informer, nearly every developer they talked to at X05 expressed difficulties fitting their launch titles onto a single disc."
"One unnamed yet "highly anticipated" game in particular is said to currently occupy a full four 9Gb DVDs."
(From Jostiq)
'During a Q&A update, project director Casey Hudson confirmed that Mass Effect "is a monstrous game. In fact, there was a time -- not too long ago -- when we pretty much scoffed at the idea of fitting onto one disc. But, there's an art to optimizing the data that goes on a disc"; Mass Effect will fit onto a single disc -- "but just barely."'
(From Joystiq)
Now, obviously it's not impossible to get HD games to the 9GB mark, but it certainly is harder. Removing that one potential barrier opens more possibilities instead of restricting options. And before anybody mentions compression, as though it were a magic pill to shrink anything to nothing, note that high compression generally means a large negative performance impact.
I'm quite happy Sony put Blu-Ray in to the PS3. I like the 360 - it's a good console with great games, but BluRay is a strong magnet on Sony's side.
A game does not need 50gb to pack quality gameplay and this is where sony fails. They assume that hi-def content equals success and desirability from consumers which obviously is not the case. They also assume that a majority is using HDTVs but thats a different story. Sony should really take some private lessons from MS and Nintendo on how a game console should be.
No offense but Gears of Wars looks totally awesome to me without the need for Blu-Ray or HDDVD. How? Its called quality programming. And if these last 3-4 months showed us something its that a successful game = quality gameplay and not hi-def elements. GoW is not a killer because it looks awesome. Its a killer because it looks awesome AND packs awesome gameplay.
So those people making games for PS3 claiming they cant fit them in DVDs they should check out GoW or Twilight Princess on how a good game should be.
Personally i dont think its that smart more so the opposite.
My dad being the perfect example, he saw an advert for a Blu-Ray Film in a Newspaper and asked me what it was. I asked him what HD-DVD was and he knew straight away as it's a common terminology, DVD (Well established) HD (All the rage atm), i then said it's basically the BetaMax Vs. VHS all over again.
Yes, many of will say, but that's only your dad... Well it's going to be very similar for a lot of the less technological people out there who don't watch things like this occurring... I think HD-DVD will win in the long run, simply for it's familiarity, it's mainly going to be up to the film studios who wins, those that bring out the best movies will win it for their respective devices.
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