Don't forget, the ps3's launch wash pushed back half a year because of problems with the Blu-Ray drive. Wich means it would have launched earlier and with a much lower price, and even have made the 2006 holiday season in Europe. PS3 would definitely have outsold 360 probably 2:1 orso, but Blu-Ray probably wouldn't have beaten HD DVD by now, and maybe even lost.

I'm not sure region-free players are illegal. The wiki article on blu-ray has a link to a site which has a seller of such players located in the EU. Anyway, I thought the whole point of regional-converters was to get around region lockout legally without violating copyright.

Without Blu-Ray the PS3 would have a significantly lower price point which would have meant a much larger market share for the PS3. With a launch price of $400 and a current price of $250-300 the PS3 would probably be competing effectively with the Wii instead of struggling to catch the 360 since the price has clearly been the PS3's biggest obsticle.

It wouldve sold a little less (not much) because some people bought a PS3 just for a Blu-Ray player.

-$125 BRD +$25 optical dvd drive = $740 production tag at launch, they would not have launched it at $400, probably would have stayed at the 599 price tag. - ~$50 BRD cost now +$20 optical dvd drive and they would still be losing money at the current pricepoint. It was a combination of multiple high priced new technologies with the ps3, you really can't remove 1 and expect a remedy.

I heard that the Blu-Ray drive cost Sony over $200 per unit during the PS3's launch. I'm guessing that those sources weren't so credible. If the Blu-Ray drive is indeed so cheap then cost cutting measures accross the board would have been needed to allow the PS3 to effectively compete.

In various parts of the EU (or at least EFTA) there are no laws against circumventing DRM, or at least 'broken' DRM (like CSS, used on DVDs).  In the US, and other countries with US-like laws, this is not the case.  There are also countries for which region codes are illegal; they get region-0 DVD players legally (which could legally be imported into the US after paying applicable taxes and tarriffs).  Notably, they are currently region 2 in blu-ray, NOT region 0, in seeming violation of the court rulings about DVD players stipulating no region-locking.  Whether anything is happening over this, I do not know (not australian).

Currently, however, all region-free BR players (that i've seen at least) are illegal.  At least, they're probably legal for personal use, but since I only look at them for use in my job, they need to be squeaky-clean, which they are most certainly not in the US.

We'd loose out.

Quite sure.  You see all of the PS3 games are made on blu-ray discs.  So if I had all of these games, and a PS3 that doesn't have a blu-ray drive, well then the PS3 wouldn't play them, would it?

The end result, 10 years from now:

Sony takes 2nd place this gen easily, PS3 sells well, but HD-DVD succeeds.
Sony, +500B yen over the generation easily.

as opposed to the current situation:

Sony takes 3rd place initially, PS3 has a dangerously slow start, Blu-Ray wins format war.
Sony, +1000B Yen by the end of generation, easily, even after R&D is accounted for.


Don't underestimate the royalty income from Blu-Ray players and discs. CDs made Philips and Sony, back in the day.  Some 250 million DVD drives were shipped last year, in PCs alone.  The DVD royalty is $18 a player (or was it $12?  I forget).  The Blu-Ray royalty is $30 per player, and it will become the standard, whether you like it or not.

Now imagine how many discs are printed each year for the dominant format...