| Blue3 said: Blu laser diods droped down to $8, emotion engine axed and 65 nano chips. Wonder how much that will save on hardware production. |
The diode did drop in price but the rest of the drive is still expensive. A lot of people seem to think the diode was $100 when it was closer to $30. The EE is saving something like $20 and the 65 nm chips do save money as well but again not as much as some people think because with the die shrink there will also be a decrease in yields (will improve over time but it can take a while) which off sets some of the cost savings.
Total I expect that Sony is only saving about $75 to $100 vs the original production cost. The US loses used to be around $150 - $200 per a console but then they still have the EE so I suspect its still around $100 each. The loses in Japan must be huge because the system had a price drop before release and is much cheaper then in the rest of the world (so $200).
One VERY easy way to get a price drop would be to make Blu-ray movie playback optional. Not removing the drive but making it so that you have to purchase a seperate license to play movies. Everything I have seen says the licenses are around $50 per a player and while some of this would go back to Sony because they helped develop the standard there is a lot more in it then just them. 9 companies produced the disk, player, and other standards for Blu-ray and there is a huge number of companies with codecs, encryption and other pieces as well.
The many fees with playback of DVD's was why you had to purchase the remote for the xbox to play movies. It was a huge cost savings over the life of the console.
