Jesus.

How many people had a stand alone blu ray player before the PS3?  Was that also because they simply didnt care?  There are VERY few stand alone players, Sony doesnt release one until next year for instance.

Look.

I am all about streaming, but the BS being spouted on here and the shifting of stance to accomodate this odd decision is laughable.

There is NO DOUBT that if it was the other way around MS would be being murdered on here today.

Since they own and license the technology, Sony probably know a thing or two about Blu-ray's market share in the consumption of 4K content.

So what the hell happened to all those people behind the digital future movement? Where they at?

Anyway, this isn't really a big deal. It still plays 4K content, and from the research I've done, I haven't actually found a reason why the regular blu Ray drives can't be patched to support 4K UHD blu Ray because as far as I understand, there is no extra tech required to read the different layers on a blu Ray and you could certainly fit a 4K film on a 90GB triple layer disc. I've half thought about predicting such a patch forth coming in fact. Probably an issue of greed that the consortium of vendors would be embarrassed to admit that we don't in fact need any UhD player as legacy hardware could just be patched.

One other thing people can easily enough deduce here is that these mid gen consoles were not supposed to be here in time for 4K I think.

I think that Microsoft was only ready to announce the slim but caught wind that Sony was going to release a more powerful console and soon. This is why at E3 they super prematurely "revealed" the Scorpio with no set specs, no demos, not even a glimpse of the console - it was basically just a sheet saying "it will probably have this". They did that because they threw something together last minute to try and pre emptively one up Sony. Scorpio probably was supposed to be the next gen Xbox. At the time of reveal, Sony was way too far into finishing up PS Pro to up the specs or add in other hardware features, specifically 4K blu Ray. But again, I think that can be patched in to certain newer disk drives. So, honestly, this is one of those times where I'm going to patiently wait it out, and if I'm proven right no one will know except maybe anyone who remembers this post. But we'll see. Sony is in the driver seat, ps Pro isnt a reaction to Scorpio, it's the other way around, so I'm not going to mull over things that were inevitably too late to change or include regardless, and Ps Pro still plays nice on 4K in every other aspect so... We'll let the market decide the Pros fate (-: I'll be picking mine up around launch.

edit - Andrew House claims it can't be upgraded via firmware. Still can't find a reason why. Pretty sure they use the same kinds of discs, just with more layers for more storage.

It saves money - then it isn't a bad design choice for the consumer.

You mean it is a bad design choice for the people wanting a 4K player combined with a console year this year.

I don't want a 4K blu-ray physical media player - thus it is a good design choice for me.. since it is cheaper.

You can't sweep everything under the rug as "it is bad for the consumer" when it isn't. It is bad for a select group of people. That question is how big is that select group of people.

I'd say - not very big.

"We have a product for people who want to watch 4k blu-rays, it's called a Sony dedicated player, thank you". Sounds familiar.

They practically force people with 4K tvs to buy an Xbone S or Scorpio now, I certainly would if I got meself one of them shiny Oled tvs with HDR. Not to mention Scorpio is 6Tflopz so games will look better on it(probably native 4K), that's a given with 1.8tflopz of difference and after yesterday's talk of temporal solutions etc.

PS4P should've been 499 with better specs and the new Bluray drive included. The console is meant for the hardcore anyway, why not go all in?

Seriously tho, no support of the newest medium and one they have such vested interest in, is so un-Sony like. Sony was always on the forefront of new technology and I've never seen them cheap out like this.

No it doesn't.  Just buy a 4k player.  Or those who have already have a collection more than likely already have a 4k player.  Don't make up false issues in an attempt to bolster your false argument.