BluRay in PS3 was Win/Win for Sony

[Grey Acumen]

Final-Fan said:

LordTheNightKnight said:

Final-Fan said:

Grey Acumen said:
first off, if the PS3 launched without BluRay, it might have been cheaper, but what would it have had to set itself apart from the 360 at all? Instead of it being "360 is cheaper and has more games and xbox LIVE" it would have been "360 is the same price and has more games and xbox LIVE"

I'm sympathetic to your position, but when you try to claim (apparently) that being at a higher price HELPED the PS3, I just have to laugh.

He didn't write that it was the higher price SOLELY. You're twisting his words.

Maybe. He said that the higher price (and Blu-ray) were what differentiated the PS3 from the 360. I strongly disagree with the allegation that if not for the (expensive) Blu-ray the PS3 it would not have been able to offer unique and appealing alternative features to those of the 360, but in any case that was what he said.

The higher price (and Blu-ray) are the only things different in the "before" and "after" picture he paints in which the hypothetical Blu-ray-less PS3 has nothing to offer that the 360 doesn't do better. If I did twist his words it was unintentional and (IMO) a very understandable error. [edit: of course, I suppose I did make it sound like having the price high for the sake of having it high was what he said, and that of course is wrong. But it is generally accepted that Blu-ray did not benefit most PS3 owners but only a certain percentage of them, making the Blu-ray-playing PS3 less of a value to most than the non-Blu-ray-playing PS3. I believe GreyAcumen agrees with this, and the rest is implied.]

GreyAcumen: care to set me straight?

This is the only place I see a flaw in your interpretation, it's not a matter that they would have made a fuss over the 360 being better, but there would have been nothing over which to make a fuss abotu the PS3 being better. Looking at the buzz in the media, I don't think NOT having the blu ray and having the lower price, would have been significantly different than NOT having the lower price and having bluray, because there STILL would have been all the OTHER issues for it to deal with. The hype against it would have come out roughly the same.

Let's face it, it got bad hype because of the high price, so what did Sony do? They lowered the price. Do you really think that if they had released it at the same price as the 360 that they would have had enough bad press over the price to drop the price THEN? It would have stayed at that price and been no different than things are right now.

You would have still had the developer's issues with the Cell processor.

You still would have had the issue that Microsoft had been paying for 3rd party exclusives (may just be a rumor) so a lot of exclusives might have stayed that way even with an earlier release (which is assuming they would have released earlier if blu ray hadn't been included, not saying it couldn't have, just that it's not certain they would have)

You still would have had Wii being cheaper with better implementation of motion controls.

You still would have had the PS2 offering the entire Playstation library of games for a fraction of the cost, except for some 60 or so odd games that had been developed for the PS3.

You still likely would have ended up with critisism over the implementation of motion controls in heavily hyped games like Lair.

Keep in mind, when I'm bringing these issues up, I'm not using them to bash the PS3, I'm using them to point out what other issues besides Blu Ray that PS3 has had to overcome. in the long run, there was a lot more holding PS3 back then "just" Blu Ray, and in the long run, having blu ray to set itself apart from the 360 might have been a minor plus on sony's side before, but that benefit is now growing since Blu Ray has become accepted as the standard.

I honestly don't think that having the lower initial cost, with how much else the PS3 was dealing with, would have made much difference comparatively.

Really, "what if" scenarios can go however you want them to go, because there's no way to really KNOW what WOULD have happened if one thing had happened instead of another. It's pure hypotheticals, I just try to keep my guesses conservative, and there really are more factors to consider than just Blu Ray.

 

Also, why the heck has this reached two pages already?