| akuma587 said: There are enough manufacturers in the mix that Blu-Ray should have no problems. Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, Funai, Lite-On, as well as smaller niche companies have already made and/or currently have plans to make new Blu-Ray players. Hell, HD-DVD was able to do pretty well with just one manufacturer behind it, Toshiba. Their scorched earth pricing policy prevented anyone else from following them. The BDA is smarter about letting prices come down naturally rather than drastically. You have to have the Consumer Electronics manufacturers on your side, which was one of the fundamental flaws with the HD-DVD strategy. |
Sony recently patented a process to make the BD player smaller and lighter, which will probably bring down manufacturing costs as well. This is a big break, because they aren't just waiting for the usual diecast of the chips to get smaller. They are actually trying to find the lowest cost production methods and they are smart enough to let others in on the whole thing. They are basically selling the use of the patent to other companies so sharp, panny, samsung and the rest will hopefully soon be making $250 players that you can buy at a walmart. Sony would much rather have BD big, than be the big manufacturer of players. I would sell that patent to anybody that wanted it, plus, that patent comes at little expense so its all gravy for Sony.
Contrast that with MS having to pay other companies for the HD movies that they are hawking. Not sony! They are a movie companie as well, so they can basically offer the whole thing for cheap while the Xbox fans have to fork over some more $$$ comparatively. But yeah, i mean why can't Netflix come to the PS3 as well? I don't see why it couldn't, for consumers that want to rent for $2 rather than buy for $20 it would make sense for sony to make a deal with netflix as well, but FJ probably didn't think that far nowdidja?
