i never thought of it like that but it makes sense. this is on the better threads on vgchartz.

aside from this being a very minor detail, this is just completely wrong. if sony finds it profitable to lower ps3 price, they will. undercutting competitor's blu-ray player prices has absolutely nothing to with it whatsoever. indeed, the low price of ps3 compared to other blu-ray players in the early days (when ps3 was $500-$600) was the primary reason blu-ray even managed to out-muscle HD-DVD's.

also, it has long been an implicit assumption that there's much more money to be made in blu-ray than games. i have not seen any evidence of this. let's use box office as a proxy for sales of disc-based media. typically, they bring in 1-2 times as much revenue as the box office. you can easily google up box-office revenues vs. video game revenues, here just 1 link:

http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2008/08/25/2163-us-video-game-revenues-keep-growing

so as you can see, at the very least, video game revenue matches box office sales. if you're conservative, you can say that disc-based media still bring in more revenue than video games, but if i were to make an estimate that i'm willing to bet 50-50 odds on, i'd say video games account for at least 30% more than disc-based media revenues by end of 2008. and this doesn't even include hardware and peripheral sales.

so not only there is not "much more money" to be made in blu-ray than video games, it's debatable whether there's more money, period.

now, we haven't even gotten into the royalities and what-nots of these businesses. a while back, i asked a manager at a DVD-making company how much royalties they pay to the DVD association or whatever it's called. i don't remember the exact number, but it's about 5 cents per DVD, and is big portion of the cost of the production of each DVD, ~25 cents each. i know blu-ray royalties are higher--let's say $1. but video game royalties are FAR higher--$7 minimum per full-priced game. and you don't even spread between members of the blu-ray association, of which there's like 20 or 30 of them. there are 3 companies that compete for the video game royalty market.

after accounting for all this, i just don't see how anybody can claim blu-ray is a bigger profit-maker than video games. i would highly suspect it's the other way around for any given company.

and this is when people start making financially intangible arguments like "sony can better capitalize on the success of blu-ray because of their horizontal integration of their businesses". which is an argument that, since any monetary estimate can be created out of hot air, cannot ever be refuted and the discussion goes on and on and on.

So...blu ray bad?

No blu-ray good. Significantly reducing your console sales for the sake of a blu-ray victory not good.

Hmmm... this makes alot of sense I suppose. But there's probably alot more to it than that. I mean, couldn't SONY work on developing Cheaper Bluray players and finding ways to reduce the costs of the current ones???

U comment make sense. But reducing in March appears to be mainly due to their poor sale. IMO...if Sony can...they will try to hold on to the price till Aug/Sep next year before slashing 100....they will follow MS policy this year...so that they can get excellent sales boost.

BTW recently went Blu...with S350. Excellent player.....no noise at all....& HD movies...WOW. For the movie industry to blosom on Blu...now the movies have to be cheaper. Cant afford to buy too many movies at 25/30 each. At 20 or less...makes the prices more affordable (from the prespective of buying more movies). Plus....not to mention old movies..that r now on DVD at 5 each or less...still get priced at 20/25 each. ridiculous.

My summary may be a bit over-simplified, but I stand by the main point of my argument. As for the poster who talked about the PS3 initially being far cheaper than the standalones, you're right, but you are again missing part of the puzzle. The PS3 was always intended to get Blu-ray off the ground by not only getting units into homes, but also quickly reducing the cost of manufacturing Blu-ray drives via the economy of scale of mass producing PS3s. If the PS3 had not included Blu-ray, you'd still probably be paying twice as much as we are now for a standalone. The PS3 has done its job by reducing costs and defeating HDDVD. Now it's time for the standalones to take up the reins. In order to do that, they need to be competitively priced. Sony harms the sales of their BDA partners by reducing the PS3's price too quickly.

i dont see how that makes sense considering you can now get blu ray players from power city for 150 euros

What is that in $?  Like $250-$300?  That's why it makes sense that the PS3 can't be brought down to $300 yet.  It would kill sales of standalones.  If you are talking about off brands like Insignia, that's a separate matter and they are only able to offer their units because of the price reductions seen in Blu-ray drives.  The BDA was founded by Sony, Matsushita (Panasonic), Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG, Hitachi, Sharp and Samsung. There are many companies on the board.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_Association  That's a lot of partnerships.  Sure they are all technically in competition as well, but there is a symbiosis in that if Blu-ray does well, they all benefit.  Sony's decisions regarding the PS3 cannot be made simply within the bubble of the videogaming industry.

@ dougsdad: Okay, suppose that that is a reason why they "can't" drop the price (aside from other possible reasons, just for discussion's sake).

Why would they not be the one who wanted to gain most from the BR-standard? Who cares if the partners sell fewer units or more units?

Either they need to look after themselves and make sales, or either they have come to an agreement on the BR (depending on the pricing, the profit-division and such) and everyone can do what they please to increase their gains from it.

I doubt Sony would hold back for others' sake if they stand to suffer from it.