Sony Shrinking Blu-Ray Player – Possible PS3 Cost Reduction?
By Stephany on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 3:29 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Related Science, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Hardware, Sony
A smaller, and less expensive Blu-ray player has been developed by Sony and Nichia and are expecting the new laser unit, which is 3mm thick to come equipped in Sony’s laptops sometime this year. While this is good news for those looking for a new laptop at a lower cost due to the smaller Blu-ray player, gamers who have yet to purchase a PS3 may be able to get in on this as well.
Since the new Blu-ray unit is able to handle disks with organic dye in the recording layers which in turn can be churned out from existing DVD production lines, this will save the company loads of money, which hopefully will be passed on to the consumer as well. This smaller, less costly Blu-ray laser unit might be one of the contributing factors to the phasing out of the 80GB PS3 model (besides low sales), and although Sony has yet to comment on any further price cuts – it is indeed plausible to assume it will happen.
It is not known yet whether Sony will be replacing the 80GB PS3 with an entirely new SKU or just continue to push the 40 GB, we will keep you posted as this story develops. Hopefully, Sony will be making an official statement soon.
Via: Tech.co.uk
any one have any idea how much money this will knock of the PS3 pricetag?
I’m sure it will be $299 by the end of the year
I don’t know, I think size reduction would equal a price increase, thanks to all the R&D slapped into making it smaller.
@ weclock
Thats the dumbest thing I’ve read on here
you mean compared to your 299$ price tag quote ? LOL
IT IS A RUMOR ITS NOT OFFICAL. No one knows if it will really go or not sony has yet to announce anything so dont go and act like its a fact that its gone untill sony says so. What kind of article is this going on rumor and saying the ps3 will be cheaper get your facts straight.
If the PS3 goes down to $299, I will get one.
maybe it’ll make the bigger one cheaper..
ps3 should be $800,not 300.people need to work and stop whining about the pize tang.
that’s too much for a video game console, for that price I could buy a fully functioning PC that will play a larger # of games than the ps3, most of the xbox 360 games, and could function as a word processor, or other tools.
The ps3 is over priced for what it is, sure the hardware has a base cost, but it’s not worth it for console gaming. It’s a fine machine, but it set it’s sights too high imo.
could someone who knows weclock slap him?
did you know sony started off by making japanese rice wine and beans curd? they actually stole several patents, I found the history of sony here , http://www.opentopix.com/topic/tech-news/sony-starts-shrinking-blue-ray
Sony said the other day that it was just speculation and confirmed there will be no price drop on the PS3
If they add an IR diode to the box so I can use my Harmony 880, I’ll buy whatever PS3 they put out. (and no, those “dongles” are NOT a good work around).
hopefully these new players might not break in a ps3….and yes I am talking from experience.
Yeah maybe they will up the darn Video Ram to 512 while they at it… The PC I had 5 years ago had a 256mb card in it…
nick says: “What kind of article is this going on rumor and saying the ps3 will be cheaper get your facts straight”.
Reread the article before you go spouting nonsense like this. It never said that the PS3 was INDEED going to get a price cut because of this, but that if Sony is going to go with a smaller blu-ray player for their laptops, then it automatically gives the consumer the IMPRESSION that they will try to save money in other areas of production by doing the same thing. Thus, one would conclude that if this saves the company money, it will save the consumer money. It is called a big fat “duh!”.
Any person with a nominal amount of intelligence would realize on the first read through that it is a possibility, not an actuality.
Any development that makes production of Blu-Ray disks cheaper is eventually going to get passed on the consumer. Only time will tell which products incorporate this new technology…
And how much?