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Forums - Sony Discussion - Sony's in a 'bag of hurt' because of Blu-ray

PigPen on 15 May 2014

Blu-ray isn't the only reason why Sony is hurting.



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nanarchy on 15 May 2014
Aielyn said:
VanceIX said:
tiffac said:
Well good for you guys in 1st world countries if physical media dies, bad for us 3rd world countries with f@cked up internet infrastructure and services.

Can't these games just fit a microSD or something instead of a disc base media?

50gb of game would need a 64gb microSD, which are ungodly expensive. 

They're not THAT expensive.

http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale/64gb+sd+card.html

64 GB microSD with adapter, packaged, and when bought in bulk, costs as low as $4.19 per microSD. And in the meantime, fastest read speed of the BluRay drive in the PS4 is 27 MB/s... this speed cannot be increased in any PS4 unit currently created, and thus all games developed must be built with this speed in mind, even if a PS4 revision has a faster drive. On the other hand, SD speeds are limited by the card itself, and thus games that don't require fast load can save costs by being a lower class, and as costs reduce, higher speeds can be produced without needing update to the system hardware.

The cost of media was a big issue 10-20 years ago, which is why CD/DVD became such a popular medium for video game distribution. It wasn't so much a problem for the high-volume, AAA games, where cost of development were much higher than the cost of manufacturing, but it was problematic for the smaller games...

Now, we have digital distribution for those smaller games. We no longer need to be concerned with that end of the scale. And keep in mind that we're talking about regular SD/microSD, which is a writable medium... it would presumably be cheaper to manufacture non-writable ROM cards (which I believe is within the SD card specifications).

yep, I think we missed a huge opportunity this gen to completely ditch optical disks, perhaps if the gen was a year later. when you don't have to optimise a card for writing the cost of the card significantly reduces and in bulk SD would be a viable medium and enable far better future proofing for game sizes and speed requirements. BR cost sony a lot, and not just currently, they wrote some huge cheques to get other movie studio's to switch sides to BR and spent a lot on hardware in ps3 and elsewhere to try to push the format.



DM235 on 16 May 2014
nanarchy said:
Aielyn said:
VanceIX said:
tiffac said:
Well good for you guys in 1st world countries if physical media dies, bad for us 3rd world countries with f@cked up internet infrastructure and services.

Can't these games just fit a microSD or something instead of a disc base media?

50gb of game would need a 64gb microSD, which are ungodly expensive. 

They're not THAT expensive.

http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale/64gb+sd+card.html

64 GB microSD with adapter, packaged, and when bought in bulk, costs as low as $4.19 per microSD. And in the meantime, fastest read speed of the BluRay drive in the PS4 is 27 MB/s... this speed cannot be increased in any PS4 unit currently created, and thus all games developed must be built with this speed in mind, even if a PS4 revision has a faster drive. On the other hand, SD speeds are limited by the card itself, and thus games that don't require fast load can save costs by being a lower class, and as costs reduce, higher speeds can be produced without needing update to the system hardware.

The cost of media was a big issue 10-20 years ago, which is why CD/DVD became such a popular medium for video game distribution. It wasn't so much a problem for the high-volume, AAA games, where cost of development were much higher than the cost of manufacturing, but it was problematic for the smaller games...

Now, we have digital distribution for those smaller games. We no longer need to be concerned with that end of the scale. And keep in mind that we're talking about regular SD/microSD, which is a writable medium... it would presumably be cheaper to manufacture non-writable ROM cards (which I believe is within the SD card specifications).

yep, I think we missed a huge opportunity this gen to completely ditch optical disks, perhaps if the gen was a year later. when you don't have to optimise a card for writing the cost of the card significantly reduces and in bulk SD would be a viable medium and enable far better future proofing for game sizes and speed requirements. BR cost sony a lot, and not just currently, they wrote some huge cheques to get other movie studio's to switch sides to BR and spent a lot on hardware in ps3 and elsewhere to try to push the format.

We are not there yet.  A 25 GB Blu-ray disc (with full-color on disc printing), a case with color insert and shrink wrap costs less than $3/disc in bulk.

http://www.discmakers.com/products/bluray.asp

A 32GB microSD card costs about $8/card in bulk.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-Fast-Access-TF-Card-Wholesale-Bulk-Price-Micro-sd-Cards-32GB-64GB-Memory-Card/1856581944.html

If anything, publishers would prefer to go to an all-digital future, but the intranet infrastructure isn't there yet globally.



SvennoJ on 16 May 2014
DM235 said:
nanarchy said:
 

yep, I think we missed a huge opportunity this gen to completely ditch optical disks, perhaps if the gen was a year later. when you don't have to optimise a card for writing the cost of the card significantly reduces and in bulk SD would be a viable medium and enable far better future proofing for game sizes and speed requirements. BR cost sony a lot, and not just currently, they wrote some huge cheques to get other movie studio's to switch sides to BR and spent a lot on hardware in ps3 and elsewhere to try to push the format.

We are not there yet.  A 25 GB Blu-ray disc (with full-color on disc printing), a case with color insert and shrink wrap costs less than $3/disc in bulk.

http://www.discmakers.com/products/bluray.asp

A 32GB microSD card costs about $8/card in bulk.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-Fast-Access-TF-Card-Wholesale-Bulk-Price-Micro-sd-Cards-32GB-64GB-Memory-Card/1856581944.html

If anything, publishers would prefer to go to an all-digital future, but the intranet infrastructure isn't there yet globally.

Both PS4 and XB1 are positioned to be your multi media device, so the optical drive is in there anyway. No point in adding an extra SD card reader and raising the prices for games by $10 just to cover the higher production cost (and probably time? Sounds like it would take longer to make a pre loaded SD card than to press a disc)

Plus Sony has their own blu-ray pressing factories for movies and games, much cheaper than building a new SD card factory. Blu-ray has had 128GB discs on the market for over 3 years now, but I guess a second disc is cheaper overall if a game eventually needs more than 50GB. Faster drives are also available, 12x CAV blu-ray drive does 54MBs. Yet 6x CAV was deemed fast enough for installs.

Dirt cheap HDD + cheap blu-ray drive + cheap discs = profit



VanceIX on 16 May 2014
DM235 said:
nanarchy said:
Aielyn said:
VanceIX said:
tiffac said:
Well good for you guys in 1st world countries if physical media dies, bad for us 3rd world countries with f@cked up internet infrastructure and services.

Can't these games just fit a microSD or something instead of a disc base media?

50gb of game would need a 64gb microSD, which are ungodly expensive. 

They're not THAT expensive.

http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale/64gb+sd+card.html

64 GB microSD with adapter, packaged, and when bought in bulk, costs as low as $4.19 per microSD. And in the meantime, fastest read speed of the BluRay drive in the PS4 is 27 MB/s... this speed cannot be increased in any PS4 unit currently created, and thus all games developed must be built with this speed in mind, even if a PS4 revision has a faster drive. On the other hand, SD speeds are limited by the card itself, and thus games that don't require fast load can save costs by being a lower class, and as costs reduce, higher speeds can be produced without needing update to the system hardware.

The cost of media was a big issue 10-20 years ago, which is why CD/DVD became such a popular medium for video game distribution. It wasn't so much a problem for the high-volume, AAA games, where cost of development were much higher than the cost of manufacturing, but it was problematic for the smaller games...

Now, we have digital distribution for those smaller games. We no longer need to be concerned with that end of the scale. And keep in mind that we're talking about regular SD/microSD, which is a writable medium... it would presumably be cheaper to manufacture non-writable ROM cards (which I believe is within the SD card specifications).

yep, I think we missed a huge opportunity this gen to completely ditch optical disks, perhaps if the gen was a year later. when you don't have to optimise a card for writing the cost of the card significantly reduces and in bulk SD would be a viable medium and enable far better future proofing for game sizes and speed requirements. BR cost sony a lot, and not just currently, they wrote some huge cheques to get other movie studio's to switch sides to BR and spent a lot on hardware in ps3 and elsewhere to try to push the format.

We are not there yet.  A 25 GB Blu-ray disc (with full-color on disc printing), a case with color insert and shrink wrap costs less than $3/disc in bulk.

http://www.discmakers.com/products/bluray.asp

A 32GB microSD card costs about $8/card in bulk.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-Fast-Access-TF-Card-Wholesale-Bulk-Price-Micro-sd-Cards-32GB-64GB-Memory-Card/1856581944.html

If anything, publishers would prefer to go to an all-digital future, but the intranet infrastructure isn't there yet globally.

Exactly. There's no way a 64gb card goes $4 in bulk, companies have to make a profit too and flash memory is expensive. Blu-rays cost less than half as much, which is good enough reason for publishers to use them. 



                                                                                                               You're Gonna Carry That Weight.

Xbox One - PS4 - Wii U - PC

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Duderino on 16 May 2014

Set a Slickdeals(website) alert for blu rays.  Loads of places have great titles on sale for $5-8 all the time.  I never pay more than $8 for a blu-ray and I have like 70 or so in my collection.  It would be more but I only buy movies I know I will want to watch many times.



Duderino on 16 May 2014

Way too many people use their consoles to play blu-rays for them to ditch the optical drive.



Zappykins on 22 May 2014
SvennoJ said:
Zappykins said:
 

Well, I thought it was common knowledge now.  Like how Sony walked out the the video format talks because they thought if they got their Beta out first then everyone would use it.  Many of my friends got stuck with video players that you couldn't get any movie for.  I really lost a great deal of respect for Sony company after that.  But they did make the best consumer televions for many years. Till Samsung finally passed them.

HD DVD had some advantages over Blu-ray.  Blu-ray can store more, but gosh darn they take forever to load up.  I don't think one was really signifianctly better than the other.  They both use blue lasers and similar tech.  The whole war was stupid and avoidable.

Why not blamce JVC for not going to Sony sooner with VHS, and instead launching a competing format?
My parents went with video 2000 from Phillips, superior quality, dead. You could record on both sides, it had reverse and different play speeds without any distortion, full quality pause. It was quite a step back switching to VHS.

I still have the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player with a bunch of HD DVDs. The quality is not as good, but those were early ones ofcourse. Still HD-DVD has a maximum specced bitrate of 28mbps for video, Blu-ray 40mbps. Blame the producers for slow loading discs. I have blu-rays that boot fast and directly to the menu screen, although those are the exception. And disable internet for your blu-ray player if you can, some download up to date trailers or other crap. I hate BD live.

Competition isn't always good and being an early adopter is risky. Typical prisoner's dilemma in business. I'm glad the best format won this time. Philips was first with home VCR in 1972 and made the best with VC2000, got them nowhere.

As a collector digital movies are worse now than the video tape format war was. Which service will survive, have the most complete catalog, best consistent quality, stable collection, who knows. REDRAY player, Kaleidescope, Sony 4K player, Netflix, Amazon video, iTunes video, XBox video, PSN, UltraViolet, Disney digital.

As far as Betamax because Sony had lied about their development and wanted to corner the market by coming out first.  They knew the other guysm like JVC, weren't ready.  It was sneaky, underhanded and shameful in my opinion. 

Speaking of, what do you think of Ultra Violet?  I know it was supposed to be 'THE Standard' but not sure how many people are using it.  It seems like a good idea.

Then I would hope you would be able to upgrade a movie you own. So go from HD to 4K for a small fee.



 

Really not sure I see any point of Consol over PC's since Kinect, Wii and other alternative ways to play have been abandoned. 

Top 50 'most fun' game list coming soon!

 

Tell me a funny joke!