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Forums - Gaming - Cost of UHD Blu Ray - Is MS subsidizing Xbone S, or is Sony just milking it?

Pemalite on 12 September 2016
Qwark said:

but a regular blu ray player can't get a firmware update for UHD movies as they did for 3d blu ray.

Bdxl is more expensive than regular blu ray it is simple as that.

 

On PC they have and can, depending on your drive.

Qwark said:
I have never seen Sony using a disc bigger than 50gb and they have tried to get as close to the limit as possible. MS doesn't use them either and especially the halo games have huge first day patches for the SP. Even if the PS4 would be able to read those discs which also means the player needs to be able to read 128mbit as you please per second. On each layer and usually the third layer is slower than the first. But Sony mainly didn't include one because of the costs

 


You aren't looking at the bigger picture.

BDXL allows for more space to be used for higher quality Audio and Video.
The original Playstation didn't use all it's space up for the games themselves. - A stupidly massive portion was used for higher quality Video and Audio, aka. FMV.
Same wen't with the PS3, most evident with Final Fantasy, where the PS3 had full 1080P video whilst the Xbox had highly compressed low-quality stuff.

Of course the spanner in the works is the original Xbox One doesn't support it, so either games will need to ship on two discs, or have one side of the Disc with the BDXL content and the other for Blu Ray or you put all the content the Xbox One can read on the first layer with the higher quality assets on the layers it can't read.

I'm keen to watch and see how things play out.




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DJEVOLVE on 12 September 2016

No Sony is just milking it.



Oneeee-Chan!!! on 12 September 2016

Cost of DUHDuty . Just saying !



AsGryffynn on 12 September 2016
greenmedic88 said:
First off, I don't think a UHD drive adds $50. I'm going to say it's probably closer to $15. If so, then the whole profiteering by deletion of features theory goes right out the window. Rather than debate it (honestly, it doesn't matter to me), I'm more than happy to wait and see the iFixit or iSupply BoM break down when they publish them.

Either Sony was shaving costs down to the bare minimum and shifting that BoM budget into what matters most for games, the performance hardware specs (GPU and other logic board upgrades), or they are simply continuing to push the PS4 as a gaming platform, first and foremost.

I think it could also signal a lack of interest in continuing to push retail optical formats like 4K BD, or at least to the degree that they're not trying to push a new standard as was the case for the PS3 and BD, which helped BD as a format but to the initial detriment of the PS3 as a gaming platform because back in the mid 2000s, BD diodes were a costly commodity, which was reflected in the price of the PS3.

Based upon MS' current XBO marketing campaign, which will become more evident as we roll into the holidays, MS is using UHD as their key bullet point feature to distinguish their hardware's advantage over the PS4.

From a consumer standpoint, do you pay $399 for about 2x (more? someone feel free to chime in because I'm not going to compare 4.2 tFLOPs to whatever the XBO S produces) gaming performance, or do you pay $349 for less than half the processing power and 4K BD playback? That's just hardware we're talking about, services and game catalogs are a separate discussion for the purpose of discussing hardware specs.

I think they are actually capping off PS4 costs to be able to sell the PS4 Pro for a lower price... 



drkohler on 12 September 2016
aLkaLiNE said:

Anyway, there is extremely strong and compelling evidence that the PS4 can be UHD compatible

edit: also, the hardware is actually barely different at all d: same laser diode..

No amount of Jeff Rigby quoting will transmogrify a PS4 blu-ray drive into an uhd drive. The key hardware element is the lens system which must be different from "normal" blu-ray drives (higher NA or simpler said "rounder lens"). No software patch can change that, ever. As it seems, even the PS4 Pro will have a "normal" blu-ray drive.