Sony makes a bold move to push it's console..

    ..and to push the next-gen format war to their advantage.

    Sony CEO Howard Stringer has announced that Sony is going to sell PS3 under $400 when it arrives in mid-2006.

    Howard stated that Sony is going to sell PS3 at a significant loss to push Blu-ray standard in to the market. This is a huge advantage over the Xenon that uses the standard DVDs for games and multimedia playback. Microsoft has hinted that they might make a HD-DVD version of Xenon in the future, but it will only play HD-DVD movies, the games will remain in the dvd format.

    Some Sony employee slipped a month or so back that with the originally planned price of $600 dollars, they would still lose money for the first few ten thousand consoles.

    Now, I imagine what it might have cost IF Sony had went for their bizarre plans for having a Blu-Ray burner, HDD and the Tivo thing in the console. The cost might have been close to $1000 dollars.

    I think PS3 is just ridiculous.

    well....

    the thing is...what it ultimately comes down to is having enough accessible storage space and ways to efficiently move data on and off of it, or from the disk to memory for playing. so there is this blu-ray reader that is expensive, and maybe adding burning cabability drives that up. I can see that pushing up the cost for sure.

    As for giving it TiVo capabilities, first issue is the storage. How many gigs of space do we need? 40? 80? 120? By the time the PS3 ships, how expensive will that be? Would it even need to be a hard drive or is there another kind of permanent storage alternative that could be cheaper? Then you need to figure out the TV input/output...meaning...would the PS3 need a co-ax input like a cable box or Satellite receiver? Then you need the software, but building that isn't that expensive...not trivial, but not that expensive (and besides that's part of the fixed cost of development and then goes into expense overhead to support and occassionally upgrade the software)...

    Bottom line on per unit costs... It's too hard to speculate on actual per unit costs without a Bill of Materials (BOM) Merril Lynch got ahold of both the proposed PS3 and 'actual' X360 BOM's and first surfased the story about the huge cost advantage for X360.

    What's the key lever to platform success? Content! In the business world, cashflow is king. In video game platform launches, content is king. The money flows where the good games are. If both platforms have enough compelling content, both will kick ass.

    Nuff said...

    Honsetly, I think Sony pushing their format like that will probably backfire. They could have done that 5 years ago, because they had so much clout in the consumer electronics arena. That clout is gone. Samsung has pretty much beaten them in the last few rounds of consumer electronics, Toshiba is getting stronger, and American and European companies are taking up significant market share. If Sony pushes Blu-Ray this way to try to strong arm everybody else who is supporting HD-DVD, they're going to end up in a corner by themselves. If you need any evidence, look at UMDs. Sony wanted UMDs to be a popular format for other handheld devices like Palms and Blackberrys. But they refused to let anybody else have any say on speces and development, so nobody wanted to play ball. So now Sony sank a lot of money into a formt that isn't going to go down in cost anytime soon because the demand isn't there. And nobody wants to spend 20-30 bucks on a movie they probably already have, or can only watch on one device.

    Quote

    oh ok. Still too much for a console.

    not really when u think about that the best graphics card costs more for a pc. Besides the ps3 after reading about it on 3 different sites made me excited what they are packing this baby with. Im nota console fan but this one sounds and looks great. Im definatly getting one and Xbox 360 is going to get owned graphic and game wise for sure in my opinion.

    Yes, personally I think that consoles are very cheap considering the specification that goes in them. If you were to get that lot for a PC you would be looking at a slightly upsetting sum (bearing in mind that you'd also need additional stuff for HD support and whatnot).

    It's just that in general, PC owners can't get their head around the fact that most people who buy consoles aren't also paying for maintenance PC upgrades every year or so. As such, they can afford to drop a few hundred on a gaming rig that will last them several years.

    Console buyers also pay less FOR less. Usually console gamers can't get their head around the fact that their machine even if it is cheap in their mind, they are actually paying less for less funtions.

    PC gamers are usually those who cater for certain gaming style, like me, FPS, RTS and MMORPGs are my game, something no console does better than a PC, also, expansions, mods, maps, skins, mutators, the list goes on.

    And finally, you pay less for the console to pay more for the games. You can grab a 1 month old game for 45€ a new one for 49€ 3month or older usually go both ways of 20€. Xenon games go for 65€ and it is not unusual to find a store that steals you 70€ for a brand new hype game like Quake 4, after 1 month you can grab that game for 60€ 3 months or older are still around 50-40€ hell even now stores are selling mercenaries for 60€ and it's Xbox game.

    I'm a cheap bastard, the 20€ difference is killing me, I cry hysterically in the store if I can't get game for 20€, the last game I bought brand spnaking new was Command & Conquer: Tiberium Sun. I don't count WoW because it wasn't full price, it was MORE, collectors edition baby, but I was not buying a game, I was buying my new life.

    But I'm having a feeling that Nintendo might try to lower the Revolution game prices in order to compete with the Xenon and PS3 better, it did that for DS when PSP came, so I don't see a areason why not. It would be a dream come true.

    Sorry for a post with no meaning, I woke up around 30minutes ago.

    I don't think there's really any argument that most of us prefer PCs, Kosmo. My point was that the majority of those who purchase consoles don't see an issue with the price at all because, unlike us, it's all they get. The power of PC gaming comes at the terrible sacrifice of constantly having to keep up with the hardware race. Console gaming is a bit more relaxed, and that's what your generic Xbox owner wants.

    Heh.

    I think everybody knew that MS shot themselves in the financial gob with their original Xbox pricing, but I really can't believe that they've gone and done it again. They must either really not care about making a profit or are just thick.

    Nice. I was starting to see PS3 as a venerable competition for Xenon. But if the specs are correct, if PS3 costs more than 400 dollars and ships without HDD nor any games, it's just no match for Xenon in price point of view.

    And Thrik, you would think that MS screwed up by selling Xboxes at a loss, but they covered their losses ten fold with game sales so it's hardly a "shot in the financial gob" as you put it.

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