Report: PS3 to sell for $399, cost $494 to make

Retr0gamer

I really hope Sony don't give us another console with a pitifully bad quality disk drive that breaks after 6 months.

cregser

Peteee wrote:

Theres no way the cell and the blu-ray drive are costing 100 a piece.

I read that the Blu-Ray technology requires existing manufacturing plants to be redesigned almost from scratch - costing loads of money.

The HD-DVD disks only require slight modifications to current manufacturing plants which is why it is still in competition with Blu-Ray despite having less capacity.

If cost wasn't an issue for Blu-Ray I'm sure it would be here by now.

LookingFor

I remember analysts putting out similar figures, if not higher, for PS2, and more recently, I saw estimates up to $500 for PSP.

I've no doubt that it'll cost quite a lot to manufacture at launch, but Sony have always eaten large losses in the early stages of a systems life, only to later reap the benefits of their own manufacturing and high volumes. I'd be very surprised if PS3 cost more than $300 at launch, at least for a standard version (if they have multiple versions ala PSP).

Basically, the volumes they can expect out of a Playstation system make a high initial cost, for them, affordable.

Balfa

skywalker wrote:

xbox 360 could easily drop 50-100 € off the price of their machine (& have a lot more games on the shelves by then). Would put Sony on the back foot from the get go.

Can anyone say "Dreamcast"?

Retr0gamer

Unlike Sega, Microsoft don't have a string of **** up consoles and add-ons going into this generations console war.

flogen

cregser wrote:

I read that the Blu-Ray technology requires existing manufacturing plants to be redesigned almost from scratch - costing loads of money.

The HD-DVD disks only require slight modifications to current manufacturing plants which is why it is still in competition with Blu-Ray despite having less capacity.

If cost wasn't an issue for Blu-Ray I'm sure it would be here by now.

I don't think most people give a fúck about the 4 or 5 gigs extra space, I don't see the full capacity of a single layer HD/BR disc being used for a while, given that DVD's are only just becoming standard in PC gaming and are likely to be the format of choice for the opening round of the next gen battle (like CD-Roms were still used on PS2 for a while). I am worried, however about soundings by Gates that future 360 models may support HD DVDs (here) talk about damaging early sales! Especially if they decide to make HD based games that only run on newer models...

monument

flogen wrote:

well sony have yet to say if a HD will come with the machine, I think they'd be fools not to, one of the best parts of the XB is the HD (well, one of the best extras on top of performance)

Wrong, at their pre-E3 press conference Sony said the PS3 would support two outputs for HDTV, at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p (well, actually, it was in a press release).

Peteee

flogen wrote:

I don't think most people give a fúck about the 4 or 5 gigs extra space

I sure as hell do! Not from a movie/game perspective, but from a data perspective.

50 gigabytes dual layer is far better then 30 gigabytes dual layer.

I mean HD-DVD is a joke format

kaimera

wtf is taking advantage of 30gigs of storage atm let alone 50gigs?

you just want blu-ray to work pete

If cost wasn't an issue for Blu-Ray I'm sure it would be here by now.

ditto. Sony hardly held back on blu_ray if it's as cheap as you make it out to be JUST to put it in the ps3.

skywalker

monument wrote:

Wrong, at their pre-E3 press conference Sony said the PS3 would support two outputs for HDTV, at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p (well, actually, it was in a press release).

I think he was taking about hard drives, not high def (thats gonna happen so much from now on.) if you read it again he says A hd

flogen wrote:

well sony have yet to say if a HD will come with the machine

LookingFor

kaimera wrote:

wtf is taking advantage of 30gigs of storage atm let alone 50gigs?

Nothing, but we're talking about a system designed to last over 5 or 6 years. Some games certainly are beginning to come up on the limits of DVDs.

Anyway, I want in-game 7.1 surround sound

kaimera wrote:

ditto. Sony hardly held back on blu_ray if it's as cheap as you make it out to be JUST to put it in the ps3.

Bluray isn't out yet for many more reasons than manufacturing cost - the Bluray rom spec was only finalised relatively recently, and it's more a matter of when Hollywood is ready than when the drives are ready. Hollywood seems to be pointing at 2006 as the year they start putting out hidef movies, and once that starts, you'll see Bluray and HDDVD players become generally available.

BloodBath

Surely the gpu and ram are the most expensive parts as sony cannot source these themselves. I'd imagine the gpu's are costing them at least $100 a piece and the ram something similar.

Mitch Connor

skywalker wrote:

I think he was taking about hard drives, not high def (thats gonna happen so much from now on.) if you read it again he says A hd

nope - they were def talking bout HDTV.

LookingFor

BloodBath wrote:

Surely the gpu and ram are the most expensive parts as sony cannot source these themselves. I'd imagine the gpu's are costing them at least $100 a piece and the ram something similar.

True about the RAM, but Sony is manufacturing the GPU themselves. The only extra cost above their own manufacturing cost on that is a $5 royalty to NVidia per unit sold (well, it's apparently $5).

Balfa

Tauren wrote:

nope - they were def talking bout HDTV.

My god, flogen, not sony. READ.

flogen

Balfa wrote:

My god, flogen, not sony. READ.

ha! yes, I was talking about the addition of A HARD DRIVE and not High Def capabilities.

oh, and reports from Japan suggest that it won't ship with a HD:
http://eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=59876

as an aside, I find the boast of an 80gig HD pretty silly, given that no one knows what will be needed in the first place (and that it will probably cost a bomb to buy, while MS gives you a decent drive with the machine). I do wonder if the 360 will officially support USB flash drives as a way of combatting the PS3's use of Memory sticks, perhaps MS could make their own!

LookingFor

flogen wrote:

as an aside, I find the boast of an 80gig HD pretty silly, given that no one knows what will be needed in the first place (and that it will probably cost a bomb to buy, while MS gives you a decent drive with the machine).

I doubt it'll cost THAT much. The MS drive may be enough for "just" games use, but if you wish to make your console a media centre - which both X360 and PS3 aspire to - you'll need a lot more space than that.

Even with "just" games, depending on how much you use it, and what kind of functionality MS includes (for example, if you can rip games to the HD for fast loading and switching), you may well come up against the bounds of that 20GB.

flogen wrote:

I do wonder if the 360 will officially support USB flash drives as a way of combatting the PS3's use of Memory sticks, perhaps MS could make their own!

They do have their own memory cards Or they could open their platform up to a wide range of memory card types as PS3 has (it'll take SD cards, standard and mini as well as CompactFlash, in addition to their own Memory Sticks).

monument

flogen wrote:

ha! yes, I was talking about the addition of A HARD DRIVE and not High Def capabilities.

Yes, my mistake - too many fecking abbreviations.

steviec

If the hard drive is optional, doesn't that inhibit the games then because they can't make use of it? Not sure if this is how x-box games work because I never got into the x-box, but surely a game like GTA would benefit hugely from knowing a HD is present, installing the map on it, and then streaming from the hard drive instead of the much slower and more laborious CD streaming that's killed so many PS2s. Like the way PC games always install and run from the hard drive. But they can hardly program the game to run in one of two ways depending whether there's a hard drive present or not. Either games use the hard drive or they don't. And if they don't it seems like a bit of a waste.

If it's just for media centre type purposes though I could probably live without the hard drive given the amount of connectivity options the PS3 has for memory cards etc.

flogen

steviec wrote:

If the hard drive is optional, doesn't that inhibit the games then because they can't make use of it? Not sure if this is how x-box games work because I never got into the x-box, but surely a game like GTA would benefit hugely from knowing a HD is present, installing the map on it, and then streaming from the hard drive instead of the much slower and more laborious CD streaming that's killed so many PS2s. Like the way PC games always install and run from the hard drive. But they can hardly program the game to run in one of two ways depending whether there's a hard drive present or not. Either games use the hard drive or they don't. And if they don't it seems like a bit of a waste.

If it's just for media centre type purposes though I could probably live without the hard drive given the amount of connectivity options the PS3 has for memory cards etc.

yeah, apparently (but I'm not sure) the xbox games install some info on the hard drive when you play them, PS3 games wouldn't be able to do that if it wasn't sure if it could rely on a HD. Shame, because a game like GTA could use such a feature extremely well.

Oh, and Monument, I think Hard Drives are being refered to as HDD's on sites etc... which helps differenciate the two!

LookingFor

steviec wrote:

If the hard drive is optional, doesn't that inhibit the games then because they can't make use of it?

What you're really asking is if developers will support it if it's not in every unit, and that depends. If your platform is very high volume (as Playstation, for example, is), often even optional accessories can receive as broad support as a standard feature on another system does, because even a fraction of a BIG userbase can still be worthwhile - bigger, perhaps, that even a competitor's entire userbase.

For example, look at PS2 - until the slimlines came along, online hardware was optional. Yet PS2 has nearly as many online games as Xbox. Look at the hard disk - whilst it arguably hasn't received as wide support as Xbox's as far as the "nice" things go (custom soundtracks etc.) in terms of offering gameplay experiences that can only be done with HDDs, PS2's HDD actually received greater creative support. Currently the only type of game that REALLY demands a HDD to even run are MMORPGs..and guess which console has a MMORPG? PS2, while Xbox has none, despite its standard hard disk.

In other words - high volumes, a very large userbase, covers a multitude of sins as far as dev support for optional accessories is concerned.

BTW, reading some MS interviews it seems like devs are being told NOT to assume the presence of a HDD in X360, at least if your game doesn't fundamentally require it (aka a MMORPG). So whilst many games will check for the HDD and make available certain options if it's present, the games have to run even if it's not there. It seems MS may be keeping its options open for the future, perhaps in terms of taking the HDD out of the standard box later on for pricing/profitability reasons, if necessary.

flogen

LookingFor wrote:

What you're really asking is if developers will support it if it's not in every unit, and that depends. If your platform is very high volume (as Playstation, for example, is), often even optional accessories can receive as broad support as a standard feature on another system does, because even a fraction of a BIG userbase can still be worthwhile - bigger, perhaps, that even a competitor's entire userbase.

For example, look at PS2 - until the slimlines came along, online hardware was optional. Yet PS2 has nearly as many online games as Xbox. Look at the hard disk - whilst it arguably hasn't received as wide support as Xbox's as far as the "nice" things go (custom soundtracks etc.) in terms of offering gameplay experiences that can only be done with HDDs, PS2's HDD actually received greater creative support. Currently the only type of game that REALLY demands a HDD to even run are MMORPGs..and guess which console has a MMORPG? PS2, while Xbox has none, despite its standard hard disk.

In other words - high volumes, a very large userbase, covers a multitude of sins as far as dev support for optional accessories is concerned.

BTW, reading some MS interviews it seems like devs are being told NOT to assume the presence of a HDD in X360, at least if your game doesn't fundamentally require it (aka a MMORPG). So whilst many games will check for the HDD and make available certain options if it's present, the games have to run even if it's not there. It seems MS may be keeping its options open for the future, perhaps in terms of taking the HDD out of the standard box later on for pricing/profitability reasons, if necessary.

I think there's a difference between HDD reliance and online features. The online features of PS2 games are just add ons, and not at the core of the game, excluding Final Fantasy, which was only given a proper release in Asia AFAIK and Resi Outbreak, and the Euro release was offline.
If a dev was to make a game for PS2 with the HDD reliance that xbox games have it wouldn't be a case of "if you have a HDD, you'll have access to extra features, if not, you wont but you'll still have the game", because the game would run partially off the HDD, and so could not function without one.
Basically, every XB game uses the HDD, not just for game saves (and other fluff like custom soundtracks) but to function full stop.

If that is true about the 360 and the HDD I wouldnt say it's to allow them to drop the HDD, but rather prove that the detachable aspect of the unit isn't just for upgrades (so that you can take it off altogether if you want), and also to capitalise on the use of Mem-cards, something Sony have probably made a bomb on and MS have missed out on big time. (I know MS make up for it with the DVD remote, but not everyone has one of them, while every PS2 owner has at least 1 mem card).

Ciaran500

LookingFor wrote:

For example, look at PS2 - until the slimlines came along, online hardware was optional. Yet PS2 has nearly as many online games as Xbox.

The PS2 has no where near as many online games as the Xbox.

LookingFor wrote:

Look at the hard disk - whilst it arguably hasn't received as wide support as Xbox's as far as the "nice" things go (custom soundtracks etc.) in terms of offering gameplay experiences that can only be done with HDDs, PS2's HDD actually received greater creative support. Currently the only type of game that REALLY demands a HDD to even run are MMORPGs..and guess which console has a MMORPG? PS2, while Xbox has none, despite its standard hard disk.

Every game on the Xbox uses and benefiets from the HDD. The only game I can think of the needs the HDD is FFXI. And there is so many MMORPGs on the PS2 :rolleyes: (and there was one on the Xbox, can't remember the name now)

Sandals

steviec wrote:

Isn't that roughly the same price as the PS2 launched for?

TOo assed, it is cheaper I payed 380 Irish punts.

LookingFor

flogen wrote:

I think there's a difference between HDD reliance and online features. The online features of PS2 games are just add ons, and not at the core of the game, excluding Final Fantasy, which was only given a proper release in Asia AFAIK and Resi Outbreak, and the Euro release was offline.

Very few console games have online at their core, though, no? Some are online-orientated, but none focussed on it completely in the way a MMORPG or, say, something like Unreal Tournament is. Most online games on xbox have online as an "add on" too. There are other games on PS2 that have been quite online-focussed, btw (the SOCOM series, for example).

Ciaran500 wrote:

The PS2 has no where near as many online games as the Xbox.

If you check Gamespot's database, it flags 154 PS2 games as having an online component vs 199 on Xbox - 45 games in the difference. Though online is optional on PS2, more people have played online with PS2 than Xbox, and that's why it still has a high number of games with an online component. You may then ask why the HDD wasn't similarly broadly supported, but I think Sony forewarned its publishing partners that the HDD would be a shortlived accessory (it can't be used with the slim PS2s) and thus that killed any potential future support for it. If it had been supported right through its life I think you would have seen more games make use of it for "optional" features, and I think that'll be the case with PS3, where the HDDs should be available from day one, and right through the system's life. The broad support of different removeable media types helps here too - I'm guessing that such storage space will all appear the same to a game, regardless of whether it's a HDD or a SD card or whatever, just with differing capacities (obviously), so that given enough capacity such media can be used for the same features as a HDD.

Ciaran500 wrote:

Every game on the Xbox uses and benefiets from the HDD.

Few or none in ways that make it a requirement. There were very few compelling uses of the Xbox harddisk as far as gameplay's concerned.

Ciaran500 wrote:

The only game I can think of the needs the HDD is FFXI. And there is so many MMORPGs on the PS2 :rolleyes: (and there was one on the Xbox, can't remember the name now)

AFAIK, PS2 has one more than Xbox There was a MMORPG planned for Xbox (True Fantasy Online), but it was cancelled. Unless I'm missing one, or some?

My overall point simply is that support for a feature, or the quality of that support, isn't strictly a function of it being standard or not. It helps if it's standard, particularly if your userbase isn't so big, but it's more complicated than that when you're dealing with a high volume platform where add-ons can be successful and get into enough consumers' homes to make support of it worthwhile.

Ciaran500

LookingFor wrote:

Very few console games have online at their core, though, no? Some are online-orientated, but none focussed on it completely in the way a MMORPG or, say, something like Unreal Tournament is. Most online games on xbox have online as an "add on" too. There are other games on PS2 that have been quite online-focussed, btw (the SOCOM series, for example).

The Xbox has online oriented game: Unreal Championship series, Crimson Skies, Mech Assault series, Star wars Battlefront, Line of Contact...
Alot of games also have excelent single player and multiplayer modes that are not tacked on.

LookingFor wrote:

Few or none in ways that make it a requirement. There were very few compelling uses of the Xbox harddisk as far as gameplay's concerned.

By that logic there is no need for a faster cpu/gpu, just cut down the graphics and detail as they are not a requirment. I much prefer every game to support the HDD and have reduced loading times.

LookingFor wrote:

AFAIK, PS2 has one more than Xbox There was a MMORPG planned for Xbox (True Fantasy Online), but it was cancelled. Unless I'm missing one, or some?

There definatley was one MMORPG that was released early on the Xbox.

LookingFor

Ciaran500 wrote:

The Xbox has online oriented game: Unreal Championship series, Crimson Skies, Mech Assault series, Star wars Battlefront, Line of Contact...
Alot of games also have excelent single player and multiplayer modes that are not tacked on.

I'm not arguing that it doesn't, simply that PS2 has those too. The quality and so forth is an arguable and a purely subjective point, but in terms of support and numbers it's nearly as strong as Xbox.

(Battlefront was online on PS2 btw).

Ciaran500 wrote:

By that logic there is no need for a faster cpu/gpu, just cut down the graphics and detail as they are not a requirment. I much prefer every game to support the HDD and have reduced loading times.

I think most would agree that graphics/physics etc is far more important than caching on a hard disk. Though I'll agree none of these are technical requirements, let's say that in terms of priority it comes down the list for most people I'd think.

Ciaran500 wrote:

There definatley was one MMORPG that was released early on the Xbox.

There was actually a second on PS2 now I think of it - Everquest.

A quick search and I can't find any released Xbox MMORPGs, unless you count Phantasy Star Online. Citizen Zero is apparently still due at the end of this year, and Ghouls 'N Ghosts has an unannounced release for both Xbox & PS2.

flogen

games like Halo 2 would have been nothing without the online multiplayer tbh, and socom was as online orientated as the likes of Rainbow Six 3 (and it's follow ons).

I'm not sure where figures say that more Ps2 users are online than xb users, but that's more than possible, given that the ps2 population is much higher than the xb one.

Cacheing on the HDD adds to the games graphical ability too, because the machine doesn't have to load as much information from the disc all the time. Games like GTA suffer on the PS2 from bad frame rates as well as having pop up issues, something that a HDD could have helped.

Oh, and my point about online not being at the core of a game wasn't that the online content on ps2 games was bad, but that a player didn't have to utilise them. If a game was built to cache on a HDD then the player would have to get one in order to use it, so comparing the ps2's HDD and network accessory use isn't really the same.

Peteee

kaimera wrote:

wtf is taking advantage of 30gigs of storage atm let alone 50gigs?

Lets take a trip through memory lane (some quotes and times may be factually incorrect)

"640k should be enough for anyone" - Bill Gates, around 1970 something maybe.

"I know, we'll create a disc to replace the cassette and vinyl record. We'll name it the Compact Disc. As a by product, it'll be able to hold 650 megabytes of data

- Hold on there jim, 650 megabytes, but surely noone will ever use that much, whats the point! - Sony and philips creating the CD

"4.7 gigabytes, no-one will use that, its impossible" - Same people while creating the DVD

"Wow, a 20 gigabyte harddrive! WOHOO infnite storage" - Me, 2000 when getting new computer.

I rest my case. Reason I want blu-ray to 'win' is cos the the EXTRA 20 gigs straight off the bat (with the potential for 200 gig discs, even though i'm 99% sure this is marketing BS)

BloodNinjaCult

Sony ps3 best ever, will pay 600euro for 1, NO PROB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do with me what you will....