Reasons why PS3 will not be expensive

[sif]

I believe that KK is playing everyone to be a fool, here's why:

PS3 will not be expensive: Kaz Hirai and Chatani said it would be 'competitive'), and I believe them over KK ("PS2 will be under $900"). When he said PS3 would be expensive he was laughing.

They also told investors and partners that it will be less than 40 000yen ($368).

Why will RSX cost more than R500? If anything it should be cheaper: no eDRAM, fixed royalties, no radical architecture (as yet....). Also the R500 is made up of two dies.

Cell $6billion dev costs (including fabs) are split 3 ways to IBM Toshiba and Sony, $2billion for Sony, thats $20 per cell, fixed dev costs (assuming 100 million cells made and sold, used just on PS3, not including PS4, TVs, PSP2, mobile phones etc). XeCPU will cost a similar amount to make as cell, because die sizes are not hugely different, extra transistors is not the defining factor in manufacturing costs, die size is. Plus Sony is one, if not the most experienced company in 90nm production (pioneered this production method more than 6 years ago with PS2), an area which MS and ATI have almost no experience in (the same goes for nVidia, which is the reason why they are using Sony's 90nm production method for the RSX). Another thing is that only 7 of the PS3 Cell's 8 SPEs are activated, meaning that if one SPE is malfunctioning Sony won't have to discard the CPU but just deactivate the malfunctioning SPE, unlike MS who will have to discharge their CPUs if just one of the PPC cores are malfunctioning.

A wifi card costs $40 now, to a consumer, how much for Sony, at manufacturing costs? Less than half?

Bluetooth is 2.4GHz tech, the same as the 360's system and will most likely be the same price to manufacture as X360 solution. Sony do not have to pay Ericsson (the creators of Bluetooth) royalties, as Sony own Ericsson, MS will have to Logitech.

Blu-Ray is the only real cost and will not be $100 more, all it is is a violet laser as well as a red laser, there will be no huge change in manufacturing costs. Stand alone players will be a $1000, just like DVD players were when PS2 came out, and how much was PS2 at launch ($300). Another important thing is that Sony isn't alone in the BD R&D, all the biggest hardware companies (minus Toshiba) are sharing the R&D cost and experience in gaining the most cost-efficient production method. When the PS3 hits the shelves the production cost of BD drives will be much less than today and the money lost on the PS3 drives will be compensated by the gain from selling BD movies and 1080p TVs (HD-DVD only run 720p resolution meaning that Sony wouldn't be able to sell its 1080p TVs to people with HD-DVD players).

Another important medium which needs mentioning is the memory-stick, the PS3 will make this medium much more common which will make more people buy Sony's memory-stick products like video-cams, car phones, MP3 players and so on.

I cannot see what all the doom and gloom stories are based upon. If someone can point out where I am wrong with logic rather than speculation, please do. Please do not use analysts ideas, they do not know squat, (PS2 and PSP=$500 at launch).

[Black Dragon37]

+rep for this post.

I thought Microsoft made the wireless by themselves. Am I missing something here?

[sif]

Microsoft commissioned Logitech to create the wireless solution. Only Microsoft will be using it (kind of like Xenon/os, were commisioned by MS for IBM/ATi, to develop).

[xbdestroya]

Ok Sif I have to correct you on some confusion here. http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/winksmile.gif


I believe that KK is playing everyone to be a fool, here's why:

PS3 will not be expensive: Kaz Hirai and Chatani said it would be 'competitive'), and I believe them over KK ("PS2 will be under $900"). When he said PS3 would be expensive he was laughing.

They also told investors and partners that it will be less than 40 000yen ($368).

Well, I do kind of agree with this - I'm not expecting a $500+ console in the least like so many fear.


Why will RSX cost more than R500? If anything it should be cheaper: no eDRAM, fixed royalties, no radical architecture (as yet....). Also the R500 is made up of two dies.

RSX may cost more than Xenos because it will have a larger die area, and unless they implement a similar system to Cell of disabling a quad such as Kutaragi has alluded to in the past, the assumption would be that yields for RSX would be lower than yields for Xenos, aka higher costs. Sony *will* be manufacturing the chips themselves, which should be a benefit, but Microsoft - though outsourcing - is also on a royalty plan this time around. eDRAM is expensive, but the fact that both dies are fabbed seperate means higher yields for both. We'll see how it plays out I guess.


Cell $6billion dev costs (including fabs) are split 3 ways to IBM Toshiba and Sony, $2billion for Sony, thats $20 per cell, fixed dev costs (assuming 100 million cells made and sold, used just on PS3, not including PS4, TVs, PSP2, mobile phones etc).

Well, Cell will cost a *lot* more than $20 per Cell, especially at the beginning. The $6 billion in 'dev' costs is actually more like $6 billion in fab costs - which means just the cost to build the fabrication facilties that will be makign Cell - not anything to do with the cost of actually making the chips themselves.


XeCPU will cost a similar amount to make as cell, because die sizes are not hugely different, extra transistors is not the defining factor in manufacturing costs, die size is. Plus Sony is one, if not the most experienced company in 90nm production (pioneered this production method more than 6 years ago with PS2), an area which MS and ATI have almost no experience in (the same goes for nVidia, which is the reason why they are using Sony's 90nm production method for the RSX). Another thing is that only 7 of the PS3 Cell's 8 SPEs are activated, meaning that if one SPE is malfunctioning Sony won't have to discard the CPU but just deactivate the malfunctioning SPE, unlike MS who will have to discharge their CPUs if just one of the PPC cores are malfunctioning.

Going with seven vs eight SPE's will certainly improve yields, and it's true that die size is the other main cost determiner, but Sony hasn't been in 90nm for six years - rather more like two. PS2 actually launched on the massive node of 250nm I believe. Here's a link to a PDF of the evolution, page 2 (http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/info/presen/eve_03/qfhh7c000000e27m-att/handout.pdf).

PS3 will launch at 90nm - the current process - but probably end it's life at 45nm.


A wifi card costs $40 now, to a consumer, how much for Sony, at manufacturing costs? Less than half?


Oh WiFi will cost them much less than that. $5 most.


Bluetooth is 2.4GHz tech, the same as the 360's system and will most likely be the same price to manufacture as X360 solution. Sony do not have to pay Ericsson (the creators of Bluetooth) royalties, as Sony own Ericsson, MS will have to Logitech.[/quote

Well Sony owns the majority of their joint handset venture, but not Ericsson itself. I'm sure their royalty fee will be minimal of course; the cost of integration probably fairly low as well.

[quote]
Blu-Ray is the only real cost and will not be $100 more, all it is is a violet laser as well as a red laser, there will be no huge change in manufacturing costs. Stand alone players will be a $1000, just like DVD players were when PS2 came out, and how much was PS2 at launch ($300). Another important thing is that Sony isn't alone in the BD R&D, all the biggest hardware companies (minus Toshiba) are sharing the R&D cost and experience in gaining the most cost-efficient production method. When the PS3 hits the shelves the production cost of BD drives will be much less than today and the money lost on the PS3 drives will be compensated by the gain from selling BD movies and 1080p TVs (HD-DVD only run 720p resolution meaning that Sony wouldn't be able to sell its 1080p TVs to people with HD-DVD players).

Blu-ray drive costs are a big unknown, but certainly a good bit of the R&D is behind them. Their major expense at launch will be the expense associated with operating manufacturing lines at low volumes of output.


Another important medium which needs mentioning is the memory-stick, the PS3 will make this medium much more common which will make more people buy Sony's memory-stick products like video-cams, car phones, MP3 players and so on.

Agreed. Or agreed at least that that's one of Sony's hopes.


I cannot see what all the doom and gloom stories are based upon. If someone can point out where I am wrong with logic rather than speculation, please do. Please do not use analysts ideas, they do not know squat, (PS2 and PSP=$500 at launch).

Well in the end, I agree that $500 seems like a price they won't launch it at. We'll just have to wait and see. http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/smile2.gif

[sif]

About the cell cost, I meant development overheads, not including manufacturing costs. Thanks for clarifications.

[Applefiend]

Do you have a URL for where they say to investors it'll be under 40,000 Yen. I could have a lot of fun with that. :D

[Domination]

I believe that KK is playing everyone to be a fool, here's why:

PS3 will not be expensive: Kaz Hirai and Chatani said it would be 'competitive'), and I believe them over KK ("PS2 will be under $900"). When he said PS3 would be expensive he was laughing.

They also told investors and partners that it will be less than 40 000yen ($368).

Why will RSX cost more than R500? If anything it should be cheaper: no eDRAM, fixed royalties, no radical architecture (as yet....). Also the R500 is made up of two dies.

Cell $6billion dev costs (including fabs) are split 3 ways to IBM Toshiba and Sony, $2billion for Sony, thats $20 per cell, fixed dev costs (assuming 100 million cells made and sold, used just on PS3, not including PS4, TVs, PSP2, mobile phones etc). XeCPU will cost a similar amount to make as cell, because die sizes are not hugely different, extra transistors is not the defining factor in manufacturing costs, die size is. Plus Sony is one, if not the most experienced company in 90nm production (pioneered this production method more than 6 years ago with PS2), an area which MS and ATI have almost no experience in (the same goes for nVidia, which is the reason why they are using Sony's 90nm production method for the RSX). Another thing is that only 7 of the PS3 Cell's 8 SPEs are activated, meaning that if one SPE is malfunctioning Sony won't have to discard the CPU but just deactivate the malfunctioning SPE, unlike MS who will have to discharge their CPUs if just one of the PPC cores are malfunctioning.

A wifi card costs $40 now, to a consumer, how much for Sony, at manufacturing costs? Less than half?

Bluetooth is 2.4GHz tech, the same as the 360's system and will most likely be the same price to manufacture as X360 solution. Sony do not have to pay Ericsson (the creators of Bluetooth) royalties, as Sony own Ericsson, MS will have to Logitech.

Blu-Ray is the only real cost and will not be $100 more, all it is is a violet laser as well as a red laser, there will be no huge change in manufacturing costs. Stand alone players will be a $1000, just like DVD players were when PS2 came out, and how much was PS2 at launch ($300). Another important thing is that Sony isn't alone in the BD R&D, all the biggest hardware companies (minus Toshiba) are sharing the R&D cost and experience in gaining the most cost-efficient production method. When the PS3 hits the shelves the production cost of BD drives will be much less than today and the money lost on the PS3 drives will be compensated by the gain from selling BD movies and 1080p TVs (HD-DVD only run 720p resolution meaning that Sony wouldn't be able to sell its 1080p TVs to people with HD-DVD players).

Another important medium which needs mentioning is the memory-stick, the PS3 will make this medium much more common which will make more people buy Sony's memory-stick products like video-cams, car phones, MP3 players and so on.

I cannot see what all the doom and gloom stories are based upon. If someone can point out where I am wrong with logic rather than speculation, please do. Please do not use analysts ideas, they do not know squat, (PS2 and PSP=$500 at launch).

Well, that is what I have been trying to say before, but it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other. :shrug: Everything Sony has done has either been done strictly in-house or with a partner included to help cut cost. But some people don't look at it that way. They look at everything else outside of the company. Most of the time, it's the competition. But it's like I have been trying to stress on many occasions already, Microsoft is not Sony and Sony is not Microsoft. But I guess no matter how wrong an analyst is, they will always outweigh the case.

[Black Dragon37]

I saw that 40,000 yen rumour on Gamespot. Check there. :)

[sif]

The link for the price: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/news.php?aid=9204

[Domination]

Do you have a URL for where they say to investors it'll be under 40,000 Yen. I could have a lot of fun with that. :D


Here you go:

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0521/e304.htm

Part 1

Honda: To this day PlayStation have brought changes in gaming for each generation. First it brought real 3D graphics then PS2 reached the entrance to virtual reality. Then, what of gaming will PS3 change?

Kutaragi: PS3 is what we've managed to reach as the product that was thought as the goal when we founded SCEI. We don't manufacture PlayStation to play games, we've been running the company to exploit wonderful power of computers for entertainment. In the first generation we put a 3D graphics chip, in PS2 we put Emotion Engine. PS3 is not a game-oriented architecture. It's not a computer for children. In terms of a computer for entertainment that is our goal, it's like PS1 and PS2 existed just for PS3.

Honda: "Using computer power for fun", "want to create a computer designed for entertainment", these were the words often heard when the first PlayStation emerged. So, the dream you had in those days has materialized this time.

Kutaragi: PC have been a computer as a tool so far. It's only a port of various philosophies from mainframe to PC. Therefore the mainstream moved from desktop PC to note PC when certain performance was reached. In PC of today, both hardware and OS are made for business tools.

However, a computer as a business tool got matured, and then they went to the direction such as Media Center PC etc. that have media playback capability. It only imitates what consumer appliances have been doing already and is not built for entertainment.

In contrast to that, PS3 is a computer created to realize entertainment. Entertainment includes not only games, but also various factors, PS3 is a computer that has become to be able to offer functions useful for all of them.

So, with what kind of approach can we realize it? In the first PlayStation, we had thought how we could bring what SGI did (3D graphics) into homes as entertainment. Likewise, things which are impossible with human power, things only solvable with supercomputers, technology to analyze invisible places in the world - the approach in PS3 is to bring them into homes to use them for entertainment.

Because of it, we allied ourselves with IBM that knows supercomputers, co-developed CELL with Toshiba in the 3-company alliance, and created the new GPU with nVIDIA. Especially we could sympathize with nVIDIA very much, and I and Jen-Hsun (nVIDIA CEO) drew the future roadmap. The entrance of this roadmap is RSX. Those who aren't in the know seem to think it's an off-the-shelf PC GPU, but in reality, they are totally different in their architectures. Including Dr. Kirk (nVIDIA architect), all people at nVIDIA are visionaries actually. Also in that regard we sympathize with each other, and we are in talks to do new thing in the future. OTOH, nVIDIA Shader can exploit past assets as it has compatibility with various shading programs in the PC world.

Honda: After you resigned as Sony corporate VP, it looks you've regained your former attitude, like chasing dreams.

Kutaragi: As a corporate VP you are always required to judge various products you are in charge of. But now, I can concentrate only on PlayStation and can elaborate it. When you have more chances to see the products you'll find our elaboration in many places.

Honda: You used to talk about the concept of CELL or PS3 with grid computing as one of analogies. Since then it's been disclosed what kind of processor CELL actually is. How does the computing model of CELL that has networking functions by itself translate into a game console in future?

Kutaragi: In the next spring, CELL will start to enter homes as the form of PS3. Thought in it there are 7 SPEs, it may be seen only as one hardware from users. But since PS3 has Gigabit Ethernet from day one, you can connect CELLs right away at 1Gbps when you have more CELLs in your home. It can be a home server, or more PS3s, in various styles CELLs in home can connect with one another via network. With 100Mbps bandwidth, they can be connected even through internet.

Honda: Is PS3 itself rigged with such mechanism for CELL computing?

Kutaragi: Of course it'll be implemented in the Cell OS that's running on PS3. As you know CELL has a secure execution layer in the processor level, it has high security even in the case where they are connected through a network. The world where power of CELL connecting with one another through a network - we prepare it properly and it's implemented in PS3.

Honda: Yesterday I interviewed with Robbie Bach of Microsoft. About the difference between XBOX360 and PS3, he said XBOX360 is oriented to integer calculation and SMP which are natural progression in computing power as a general computer, and PS3 is an approach specifically meant for augmenting floating point calcuation. It's the viewpoint like while they respect the choice of PS3, for Microsoft also as a software vendor, XBOX 360 is more friendly.

Kutaragi: I can understand the approach where computing performance is augmented by putting several general-purpose processor cores. But what you can improve by higher integer performance is only general infomation processing application. It has more power as a general-purpose computer, but it doesn't change the level of entertainment. In contrast CELL is designed from day one to generate virtual things and phenomena in a computer.

(I omit Honda's comment about supercomputer and entertainment here)

Honda: What kind of power does Entertainment Computer need?

Kutaragi: The approach where improving computing performance as much as possible and combining GPU with it is just connect a PC with a TV and redesign packaging of a case, that is not new as a concept. XBOX was such a game console in its first generation too. But we want to create the future which was previously impossible by expanding computer entertainment more than ever before. At the press conference we showed the demo of ducks driven by physics simulation, it's just about generating a virtual world in PS3.

For us it's very acceptable that Microsoft invests in this area. But just upping output resolution of a conventional game console and improving graphics power don't expand the world of game consoles as of today. This is only XBOX 1.5 rather than a next-generation XBOX. Rather than replacing what existent game console vendors have been doing with high-performance hardware, I want them to find a totally new field by their own originality. If they do so, we can expand the world of computer entertainment together.

Honda: Though this is very rough point of view, it looks functions and performance required for home appliances are thoroughly analysed for target usage and are implemented very efficiently in silicon as PS3. OTOH XBOX360 looks like a very general and flexible hardware well expected from a PC software vendor.

Kutaragi: It's the culture of SCEI that sticking onto details we implement them one by one. Every part has elaboration and it's reflected in detailed parts of system architectures.

For example, RSX is not a variant of nVIDIA's PC chip. CELL and RSX have close relationship and both can access the main memory and the VRAM transparently. CELL can access the VRAM just like the main memory, and RSX can use the main memory as a frame buffer. They are just separated for the main usage, and do not really have distinction.

This architecture was designed to kill wasteful data copy and calculation between CELL and RSX. RSX can directly refer to a result simulated by CELL and CELL can directly refer to a shape of a thing RSX added shading to (note: CELL and RSX have independent bidirectional bandwidths so there is no contention). It's impossible for shared memory no matter how beautiful rendering and complicated shading shared memory can do.

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0521/e305.htm

Part 2

Honda: It seems PS3 is designed and has the spec that can naturally exist in home as an AV appliance.

Kutaragi: It's of course. Because PlayStation is not a game console. I have never remarked that PlayStation is a game console. These days a display becomes fixed-pixel so there'll be more displays for home use that can output full HD in the real resolution. Thus it's natural move that it has 2 1080p outputs.

Honda: In the aspect of AV entertainment, what function does CELL computing that centers at PS3 offer us?

Kutaragi: Imagine we can realize the world where can easily use supercomputing power in home. CELL can realize it. PS3 and other CELL-embedded machines have the base for CELL computing through network. What's possible with a supercomputer?

For example, we internally call it as "ripening", if you lay a content in a storage server on a network, CELL ripens it when it's not used and improves its quality. For example it can ripen an SD resolution movie to up-convert to an HD movie with more details. Those contents are stored in "CELL Storage" that is a network stroage with Gigabit Ethernet and RAID. We have many plans but will certainly offer CELL Storage.

(Honda's comment: the same kind of upconverting a movie was demonstrated by Intel but they explained it requires a future many-core CPU. CELL will be able to do it and other wonderful things on a home network)

Kutaragi: In future CELL home server will be in home and it'll automatically maintain contents in CELL Storage. With the security function in CELL, you can rip a copyrighted material such as DVD and put it on a storage then can ripen it to be more beautiful.

Honda: When the era of digital contents comes in the mainstream, a home network will be filled with digital data. For example you can't sort digital camera pictures by yourself because they are too many. TV programs and music are like that too. How to maintain directories for those contents and how to search them may be solved by image analysis. Moreover, the part that visualizes results for analysis and search can be navigated plainly with 3D graphics in PS3 as a frontend.

Kutaragi: Don't worry, as it's what I want most, we'll start the development soon after we release PS3. Technologies for information analysis of movie, still picture, and sound have a tremendous number of methods including research projects not well known. With supercomputer power we can apply them in home.

Honda: As a control center of digital media, it's interesting that PS3 has an SD card slot as a default feature. It's a feature not seen in Sony (not SCEI) products, does this represent the open attitude in such an area as premium contents media distribution?

Kutaragi: Indeed there is an image that for Sony products only memory stick and ATRAC are allowed and outside technologies are ignored. But SCEI, and PlayStation, continue to use actively the world standard and what engineers in the world appreciate as the best things. So memory stick and SD card are the same. They are treated as equivalents and we won't go to our own way.

In terms of codec, as CELL has power to do realtime transcoding singlehandedly, it'll be non-significant in which format a movie is stored in a storage. You can use the best technology available in the time.

Honda: Though it must be difficult for you to tell the very price of PS3, will PS3 take the same depreciation model as the one of PS2? For instance PSP was cheaper than most expected.

Kutaragi: PSP was evaluated by many people as inexpensive, but still 24,900 Yen. Its cost model can have a feasible cash flow by the higher in-house development ratio and other factors.

The same thing can be said for PS3, but a far more number of PS3 will be sold if you compare it with PSP. But as I mentioned before PS3 has no consciousness as a game console. It was our goal that we wanted to sell a computer for entertainment with added values.

Probably in this generation, PS3, will be able to be sold even for 200,000 Yen for those who want the power. Those who want it won't judge by the price. Of course if it's the case not many people can enjoy it, but some people may think it's expensive if they think game consoles as the standard. However, PS3 is built as a product overwhelmingly wanted. Car and TV are like that. You can't help wanting it. Even we, who developed it, want it. We created such a product.

(Honda's comment: To complement Kutaragi, apparently SCE told partners that PS3 would be sold under 40,000 Yen. So far PS1 & PS2 were launched at 39,800 Yen so they are not very expensive. But, as PSP was launched at the "final price" that contains no further pricecut, PS3 may launch at 39,800 as the final price without pricecut in the near future. Anyway PS3 will be launched at a price well in the range of a common sense)

Honda: For the last question, can you show me concrete examples of the application of CELL to home appliances?

Kutaragi: In addition to the aspects I mentioned earlier such as image quality and searching digital media, automatically analysing still pictures to optimize it for printing, or when you have more CELLs in home, image quality in TV may be improved somewhere along the line unknown by a user.

Also, CELL Storage is important. Ordinary NAS is enough to store contents simply, but it's not that interesting. We make it analyze movies and sounds, and detect what they are, then add semantics. Though automatically adding semantics to things originally without metadata requires huge computing power, CELL will be the key to the problem.

Have yourself some fun. http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/wink4.gif

[Viper]

The link for the price: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/news.php?aid=9204
That says "Current speculation". Alludes nothing to an investor and partner price assurance.

[Crossbar]

Well Sony owns the majority of their joint handset venture, but not Ericsson itself. I'm sure their royalty fee will be minimal of course; the cost of integration probably fairly low as well.
Sony-Ericsson is actually a 50:50 venture between Sony and Ericsson. The blutooth IP was developed before the venture, but anyway the cost for royalty and blutooth ICs will be just a few dollars together.

Domination that was a nice article. Maybe posted before on the forum somewhere, I thought I recognised some phrases, but as Ken refuses to give new interviews we might as well read the old ones. :-)

[xbdestroya]

Sony-Ericsson is actually a 50:50 venture between Sony and Ericsson. The blutooth IP was developed before the venture, but anyway the cost for royalty and blutooth ICs will be just a few dollars together.

Domination that was a nice article. Maybe posted before on the forum somewhere, I thought I recognised some phrases, but as Ken refuses to give new interviews we might as well read the old ones. :-)


I thought it was 51:49 Sony - my bad. :rotate:

[Vivicious]

I thought I'd post an article, to clear up some misconceptions on Blu-ray. I've tried to explain it on another site before (The 90nm layer they used compared to what they're currently working on, and how expensive it is to "coat" the blu-ray discs.) but couldn't find a link to back my claim up. However, worrying about it's high price is probably in the past.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd (owners of the Panasonic brand) have established a new technology which will lower the production costs of next generation Blu-Ray discs (BD) to almost the same level as current DVD production costs.

The new technique improves the use of resin which is applied to form a protective coating on the disc surface, a step in the manufacturing process responsible for Blu-Ray discs’ high production costs. Matsushita will use trial manufacturing lines in their American labs to accumulate manufacturing knowledge, with the prospect that in only one year from now, Blu-Ray disk mass production will be possible at almost the same costs as current DVD mass production.

Matsushita and Sony’s efforts with Blu-Ray are in direct competition with the HD-DVD format backed by the Toshiba camp. In comparison with Toshiba’s HD-DVD, Blu-Ray production cost was considered higher, but with Matsushita’s new technology this cost difference may have been eliminated. The competing camps have not yet reached an agreement that could solve the impending multiformat war, but even if both standards coexist in the future, Matsushita believes the Blu-Ray disc may be ahead of the competition.

For optical discs like Blu-Ray, applying the transparent protective coating uniformly on the data layer is the most important aspect of the manufacturing process. When the liquid resin is applied, centrifugal forces cause the layer to become thicker on the outside and thinner on the inside. In the case of Blu-Ray discs, which have a thinner coating than other optical discs, the information could not be read accurately if this method were used. For this reason, until recently, a pre-manufactured resin sheet had to be mounted onto the Blu-Ray disc, resulting in production costs 2 to 3 times higher than those of regular DVDs.

Source:http://it.nikkei.co.jp/digital/news/index.aspx?i=2005100207152ea (in Japanese)

[xbdestroya]

Thanks for the link Vivicious - I have to say that's been posted a couple of times in teh HD-DVD/Blu-Ray poll thread before, which kind of acts as the default 'blu-ray' thread as well. http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/smile2.gif

I should also mention that though that technique will help in making the costs of blu-ray disc production and replication much less expensive, it shouldn't actually have any effect on the costs of the components going into the PS3 itself.

But all that aside, welcome to the forum - good to have you! http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/thumb.gif

[Vivicious]

Yes, it's more based on the rumors of PS3 games becoming more expensive because of it's format than the production costs of the blu-ray drive itself. I guess I can see how 100.000 x 5 cents can be quite a bit cheaper than 100.000 x 15-25 cents for example :) Still, it seemed a bit of a farfetched reason to up the prices of games to begin with. I'd think development time and resources would be more of an authentic reason.

Anyway, thanks. :wave:

[Z]

though this isn't new, it was nice to check again. here are somethings I find interesting (this include possible PS3 price):
Those who aren't in the know seem to think it's an off-the-shelf PC GPU, but in reality, they are totally different in their architectures.
But just upping output resolution of a conventional game console and improving graphics power don't expand the world of game consoles as of today. This is only XBOX 1.5 rather than a next-generation XBOX. Rather than replacing what existent game console vendors have been doing with high-performance hardware, I want them to find a totally new field by their own originality. If they do so, we can expand the world of computer entertainment together.
RSX is not a variant of nVIDIA's PC chip.
For example, we internally call it as "ripening", if you lay a content in a storage server on a network, CELL ripens it when it's not used and improves its quality. For example it can ripen an SD resolution movie to up-convert to an HD movie with more details.
(Honda's comment: To complement Kutaragi, apparently SCE told partners that PS3 would be sold under 40,000 Yen. So far PS1 & PS2 were launched at 39,800 Yen so they are not very expensive. But, as PSP was launched at the "final price" that contains no further pricecut, PS3 may launch at 39,800 as the final price without pricecut in the near future. Anyway PS3 will be launched at a price well in the range of a common sense)
CELL Storage is important. Ordinary NAS is enough to store contents simply, but it's not that interesting. We make it analyze movies and sounds, and detect what they are, then add semantics. Though automatically adding semantics to things originally without metadata requires huge computing power, CELL will be the key to the problem.

[tazz3]

Great post. i also think the PS3 will be 400 dollars or cheaper.

[woundingchaney]

What do we really consider expensive??

Im expecting about 450 for the PS3 and that is a great bargain for the price.

[Black Dragon37]

What do we really consider expensive??

Im expecting about 450 for the PS3 and that is a great bargain for the price.
I'll laugh if Sony really did pull a head fake in order to make people think that it's a bargain when the actual price comes out...

[Domination]

What do we really consider expensive??

Im expecting about 450 for the PS3 and that is a great bargain for the price.

Expensive would be something out of reach for the average consumer, IMO.

The PSP was a bargain, too. In fact, it was a steal. It also comes with free upgrades. http://community.the-underdogs.org/smiley/happy/dance.gif

[Z]

sure is. just compare its price to ANYportable video player and see the difference. keep in mind PSP's far superior video quality and other advanced features like console quality gaming.

[Red_Eyes]

And with the new 4gig hard drive add on, it's looking mighty good. 4gig is just the begining.

[Sephiroth_VII]

And with the new 4gig hard drive add on, it's looking mighty good. 4gig is just the begining.

Actually, no.

The PSP firmware dosn't support + 4GB of storage, since it can only read FAT which is limited to 4 GB.
Now, if only sony would update, so that we can use FAT32 formatting, sigh...

Source: http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3707