Tyrant, making a Blu Ray player unable to play Blu Ray movies wouldn't make the system any cheaper. If you disable an option on your computer, do you suddenly have 10GB more on your hard drive? No. It's the same laser that reads game discs AND movies. You keep repeating that somehow doing that would make the system cheaper, but the simple fact is that a blu ray player that can't play blu rays is pointless...and the same price as one that can play anything.ItsEvolution

the TC just has no idea what so ever of how hardwear ect works.Cutting out the movie play back from the blue ray drive would not save sony any mony what so ever as the actual hardwear "the blue ray drive" would still be the same physicly. adding a smaller HDD would also not save them mony. as some one else said thay buy in bulk and the smallest HDD made now is 80 Gigs. thus getting a HDD maker to make a smaller HDD would cost more per unit than just getting the 80 gigs. the wifi,blue tooth and usb ports ect are not that pricey for them. and would not cut the costby more than maby 20 bucks all togather. so the loss to the customer would be greater than the mony saved. and not haveing a HDD would not work as many games requir the HDD for installs. the fact is that the guts of the ps3 is still costly to make, im pretty sure we are going to see a price drop soon. maby next 6 months. but even still the ps3 is a good buy at 400. its a next gen gameing system that is packed with features and has a frickn blueray player. the blueray player alon is worth 250 bucks just by itself as thats what it would cost just for a GOOD entry level standalone player. but people dont relize that there just to focused on the sticker shock. Wild_Card

I believe I mentioned this like 3 times. I, along with everyone else, KNOW that by removing the video playback of BR movies, they would not save any money. C'mon guys, read the thread. That's not the point. Here's an example of how this works for other companies:

EVGA had a 7800 video card, which is he high end of the time (whenever that was). They made many of the 7800's and half of them had a few pipelines disabled, and lowered the clock speed and called it a 7600. Now, it still costed them the same to make it, I believe (those are just the high end model cut back) so why would they bother doing this? They know that some people can't afford to buy the high end, so they will buy this new low end 7600 or whatever it would be. The sales for the high end were there, BUT now all of a sudden people who didn't buy the high end cause they didn't have the money will buy the budget model. They still take a hit when the sell the low end, but it brings in customers who weren't there in the first place.

Now, yes, they are losing money. But this will eventually ease up, just like it always would. In the mean time, they can get ps3's in people's homes where they would not have otherwise, at the same time inreasing BR standalone player sales. For those reasons, I don't believe a $200 - 250 (heck, even a $300) PS3 is out of the question. You can't really lower the hd, because they're cheap anyway, and they wouldn't save money, same for the wifi, usb, etc. like other people have said. The BR is the only place you can cut back.

And no, this is not because the price is high and I'm cheap, we already have a ps3 and payed $600 (less, it was on sale I think) for the best model, in my opinion. I'm just thinking of things sony could try so this "console war" could be more interesting and they don't have to be on the losing end.

You fail when you think that games are not on Bluray, which they are. Games like MGS4 are 50GB and Resistance 2 is 44GB. Removing BR doesn't make sense. But if you knew that PS3 games are on BR, your claim to be able to reduce the price by 200 makes absolutely no sense, since removing video playback doesn't change the interior hardware, in other words it would just reduce a feature and keep the cost the same to sony.

Once again if sony could afford a price cut they would have done it by now. I'm all for more people buying the PS3, but I know some people just can't afford it. I expect sony to reduce the price within the next 6 months. If they can reduce it to 299. I think that would be a big step, that would only put the system at 30 dollars more expensive than a Wii and the same price as a respectable sku of the 360. The arcade is just pathetic but still 100 dollars cheaper.

Regardless this thread is fail.

navstar29

Everyone knows the games are on blueray. If you'd reread the first post, I mentioned everything you're talking about. I know that removing the video play doesn't save them ANYTHING (but who really knows, maybe the blueray system is split in 2, and not developing the movie portion is cheaper?, who can say), it's only saving them potential future money (i.e. future purchases of BR standalone players). They will still be losing how many hundreds of dollars on each system, or whatever it is now, but they would have lost that anyway. The point is, if you remove a person ability to watch BR movies on this machine, you are guaranteeing that if that person ever in the future wants to buy or watch BR movies, then they will either have to get a PS3 with that capability ($400 or maybe cheaper by then) or buy a standalone (which in turn will bring some profit back to Sony). And that might be enough of an incentive for Sony to be able to lower it considerably. Fine, maybe $200 is too low, but even a $250 - 300 price tag is a big drop, and they are not just lowering it without reason, or just to fight with MS and Nintendo, which they are doing right now. Lowering it with that feature removed will increase potential BR player sales in the future (I know they're not all made by sony, but they still get some profit off of those, and the more players out there, the more people will buy movies for it, also giving them profit). And the more consoles out there, the more games will be bought, the more development for the system, etc. etc.

This is just an opinion, and I just want to see what people think. I'm just brainstorming here on how they can have it all, and still increase their sales, without crippling the game aspect.

[QUOTE="CosmoKing7717"]

As much as I appreciate your "comment," care to expand on that? I realize that it would cost them the same to make it, but they have to take a hit if they want their console out there. They are taking a hit in sales right now, but not in the right way.

that is the worst idea ive ever heard. 200$ PS3= Sony gone from gaming industry. There already selling it at a discount because it cost more to make then what they sell it for.djsifer01

...you know nothing about how electronics work huh...(nice way of saying you are an idiot)CosmoKing7717

As much as I appreciate your "comment," care to expand on that? I realize that it would cost them the same to make it, but they have to take a hit if they want their console out there. They are taking a hit in sales right now, but not in the right way.

If this has already been suggested, please disregard. I rarely visit the PS3 forums (I have an xbox 360, my brother has the PS3).

I can't help but see these messages all over gamespot and elsewhere saying how MS is doing so well in sales, and Sony is struggling (and the Wii is dominating everything, which just boggles the mind, because it's such a crappy system with such crappy games about dancing and cooking, etc.

A lot of it has to do with the PS3's price which is still way higher than the other consoles. And the main factor is the blueray. It has to be that. And of course Sony has to push the blueray because now that is their future-mainstream medium. And rightly so. But besides games, I can count on one hand how many blueray movies we (not I, we, meaning everyone in the place) have actually seen on my bro's ps3, and I'm gessing that it's the same with a lot of other people who just want the ps3 for gaming. A lot of you want it for movies also, which is great, but not everyone wants it for that, or even for both.

My suggestion is to disable the blueray. Cut the movie playback feature out (but not the games or dvd playback). Now, it will be slightly tricky, but not as hard as it sounds, I don't think. Blueray games and movies have very different formats and structures (and dvd's and bluerays also have very different formats and file structures), so it should be pretty simple to differentiate between the 2. Sony just has to make sure that no blueray movies can be played in the system. And I don't mean some little software patch that will disable it, I mean physical removal of certain hardware, or different hardware in newer systems (that will still allow the games of course). Otherwise some guys will just make a patch removal thing and still play BR movies.

What this means is that now Sony has an excuse/reason to lower the PS3 price to make it VERY competitive, and this would help a lot this holiday season. They could charge around $200 for it, because the other $200 is basically the cost of the BR inside it. Even if it still costs them the same to make it, they still might not be losing as much as you think. If the system can't play blueray movies, then that person who buys it will know that, and eventually down the line they will have to either buy a new PS3 system (not likely) or buy a standalone BR player eventually (more likely) to play those BR movies which will eventually become standard. That means the profit of the BR players is still potentially there for each BR-disabled PS3 and they can make a LOT of people happy by lowering the price. I think this would more than double their sales right away. They could still offer the one that is there for $400 and offer this for people who don't want to watch movies. Heck, they could even offer a $250 one that has PS2 compatibility which would make even more people happy. That would be the cheapest console around, for what it does.

Anyway, just an idea, anyone think it would work?

One little thing I noticed: it's the same guy reviewing Ratchet and Clank, Heavenly Sword, and some of the other ps3 games, Aaron Thomas. This guy must really hate or dislike these ps3 games, but then why is he reviewing them? For all of his reviews, he writes these little 1 page write-ups, but the other top guys like Gerstmann, VanOrd, and Kasavin would write longer, at least 2 page reviews.

Look at his review list: they're all practically the same: he gives almost every game between 6.5-7.5.

I didn't really believe this favoritism before, but gamespot really has to start putting their best people on these top games. There's a lot riding on these games, and I hate to say it, but gamespot can either make or ruin these developers by putting out these positive or negative reviews, either biased or not.

I don't really care if I can't play it on the highest settings, or if the game even has to be run on the lowest settings (not really likely). I have a 7900gs, 2.0 core duo, and I'll be playing it on a laptop. I don't really care, as most of you really shouldn't. If you're a gamer, yeah, you love graphics and stuff, but any real gamer will like the game more than it's shiny graphics. If the game is good, which is what I'm banking on, then I'm in. If not, I can pass and not feel too badly about it.

My only concern is what some other people said, about it not be properly optimized, and said that UT3 will be better optimized. I believe that, but I hope it's not true. I remember when UT2004 came out, you could turn off so many settings in there and still get a good game going, and there were so many settings out of the game you could change even further. That was one well optimized game, for offline and online. I hope that crysis like that, where there's lots of settings and even someone with the minimum specs can eventually get it so there's no slowdown. That's the real concern, even if you could play it with some of your killer computers, would you want to if your framerate is going to be 20-? Even if I COULD play it on medium, I would still probably turn the settings down some to get some more fps.

If you all remember Doom3 (totally unoptimized game), even on the lowest settings, the game looked pretty good compared to what people had seen before (except far cry) so I'm not expecting the lowest in crysis to look bad at all.

BUT that doesn't matter, I'm just crossing my fingers that the game is fun. That's pretty much it.

REMEMBER: patches can change the graphics around and fix bugs, but no patch can make the game more fun overall.

I'm a little biased, because I have and love all 3 of the ratchet and clank games, but I believe that it will be better. I mean, no one has played the games, so we can't know for sure, but they put out solid titles in the first 3, and it's made by the same company, insomniac games, and they have done pretty well in most of their games.

Assassin's creed looks like a rehash of prince of persia to me; I'm hoping it does well, but I don't expect it to be greater than ratchet and clank.