| zarx said: Vs $0.10 for a Blu-Ray disc or even less, using a $10+ memory card would mean $70+ games. |
How much of a markup does an SD card (or SDHC, or SDXC) get from manufacture to release? And how much of that is associated with things that game cards wouldn't need (such as writeability, which is no longer necessary now that we use internal storage in consoles)?
What's more, Blu-Ray discs currently cost so little because they've been around for about 7 years. In 2008, the cost to manufacture 10,000 Blu Ray discs (50 GB) was $2.05 per disc, not counting factors such as the case, etc. Remember that this involves burning each disc. SDHC/SDXC cards don't require burning, they only require copying of data only the card, which happens at about the same rate as reading data off the card - in other words, much, much quicker. And with fewer moving parts. And that's just manufacture - there's still licensing costs to consider.
Now let's look at the cost for 15 writeable 25GB BluRay discs, for comparison. 15 writeable 25GB BluRay discs from Memorex costs $30. A single writeable 25GB BluRay disc from Verbatim, with jewel case, costs $10. It's $22 for the 50GB one.
So if a single 50 GB BluRay disc costs $22, and a single 64 GB SDXC card costs $80, then we can comfortably assume that the relationship is something like 4:1. So somehow, I doubt that a Blu-Ray disc costs $0.10, while a proprietary SDXC costs $10. It's just not believable.
