As we all know, BD have been touted as the main selling point, over 360, for PS3 ever since PS3 had its launch. Even these days, you still see BD being mentioned as an important feature for PS3, to offset its lack of good games. But what do the PS3 sales numbers mean to movie studios and hardware manufacturers?

Every PS3 sold to view BD movies, is away from the profitable standalone players, whether it's Sony, Toshiba or LG, only makes the industry to lose profits. Despite every PS3 being a BD capable player, every PS3 isn't used to view BD movies, unlike every standalone player, creating uncertainity among the publishers about how many BD players there are in reality and causing them to cut down their investments to BD.

What do you think? Discuss.

The lack of good PS3 games?

When a PS3 is sold, it adds to the potential user base of bds. The more bds sold the better. However, by somebody buying a PS3 instead of dedicated bd player, who is being hurt? It is the other hardware manufacturers, and why would Sony care about that. I am sure Sony would prefer someone buys a PS3 instead of one of their BD players, as that means more money for them in the future with games and bd sales and expanding the PS3's userbase, encouraging more investement there.

It does not stop the movie studios from making bds as they are not the ones making the hardware

If it's an issue now, I don't think it'll be an issue for long. Aren't Blu-Ray players permanently lower than the price of the PS3 now? I don't mean every model of course, but some of them are. It should be able to self sustain itself at this point.

 exactly when I stopped reading the OP and moved to the comments...

1/ "lack of good games even these days" ?

...

2/ people wanting a console and buying PS3 for games may discover BR later
==> new consumer attraction

3/ BR player are very low in price now so u dont need to buy the expensive PS3 to play BR
==> BR players less sales hurted than before ?

just my 2 cents

 I'm having a huge case of deja vu right now while reading this post.... has this thread happened before?

Well some of the arguments do have the stink of 2007 on them, so you may want to search around then. Don't blame bdbdbd though. He's just trying to be retro, like when bellbottoms went back in style.

 they aren't called bellbottoms anymore so when parents say "I use to wear bellbottoms" the kids can be like "gosh mom these arent bellbottoms im nothing like you!"

but seriously I felt like i really read libell's post before and I felt like it was from him too....

I think I see your point and that is a fairly valid look. I mean what insentive is there to drive standalone players when the obvious choice for an informed buyer is a PS3.

Yet, there is another way to look at this. Perhaps Sony has this as a median, so it forces other companies to compete and not overcharge for hardware trying to produce sales and interest overall...

Also, I think the main thing is, that this is creating more potential buyers, who would not of paid even $500 for a BD Player, but would for a PS3, or combo. People whoo would elsewise not justify the cost, make the switch.

I think it has pretty much been confirmed that SONY did the right thing with Blu-Ray and PS3 and in my opinion the past two years have been a success for the company.

Yes. What's the idea in making BD a huge issue instead of the lack of appealing titles in the library? As you can see, the better the PS3 library is becoming, the less people use BD as a selling point for PS3.

It's hurting Sony aswell, if they are selling PS3 at a loss, they lose money, if they are selling PS3 with less profit than standalone players, they make less money. Let's take a theoretical situation, where all the other HW manufacturers would stop making BD players, BD would soon end up being new UMD and be seen as "PS3 proprietary format". That would cause the studios to drop support.

The potential of selling their movies to customers is very important. Basically any PS3 owner could buy BD movies, but since the majority of consoles traditionally are found in kids rooms, plugged into small SDTV, it is creating uncertainities for the userbase. And today, the studios really don't want to make bad investments.