pliepl @ Nov 18th 2006 7:51AM

Hmurchison,

If the launch is any indication, it seems that the PS3 Blu-ray savior is a failure (at the moment anyways).

The resale price gouging wasn�t unexpected; and the press for it wasn�t too positive especially as it�s being touted as simply a �game machine� rather than the media centric machine Sony made it to be. If hardware availability mirrors that of the X360, it�ll be a while till it becomes the �affordable� Blu-ray player some of you out there have been claiming it to be. While at the same time, HD DVD will be gaining a lot of ground with the add-on unit for the X360 (reports say it works with pc�s as well) and standalone HDDVD prices will continue to drop.

Rick Lyon,

I�m not sure either, I think $499 is the MSRP and the $423 is street. When I first heard of the second gen unit, it was $499 for the US, but I�ve seen preorder sites with prices closer to the $400 mark.

With the available of the HDDVD add-on for the X360, the PS3 was never a real threat to the format war. The strategy might have worked if the two competitors had launched at the same time last fall and that the HDDVD add-on didn�t launch till now or never at all, but that didn�t happen.

Maemotaku,

88,000 is a bit optimistic if you�ve been following the coverage of the PS3 launch. A lot of those probably won�t even make it to the living room of the purchaser (but rather will be resold). The same is happening here in the states, you need only check on ebay to see. For anyone looking for a Blu-ray player, it would probably be a lot cheaper to buy the standalone units although we already know how well those are selling�.

Spending $1500-2000 for a PS3 seems a bit outrageous to me and I doubt there are people who are buying it solely for Blu-ray play back. Unfortunately for Blu-ray, rich parents with more money than sense is the minority. $600 isn�t realistic at the moment, there are only a few that will actually have gotten it for that price with the intention to use it; while a large majority of them will be using it as primarily a game machine. Every PS3 sold is a �potential� Blu-ray device while every X360 HDDVD sold is a confirmed HDDVD device. Considering it�s primary function is gaming, that potential is probably less than 50%.

You�ve also completely disregarded the USB HDDVD drive for the X360, which has been shown to also work with computers, I guess you needed to in order to inflate PS3�s relevance to the format war. If it didn�t exist, I might have agreed with a lot of your PS3 points, but that isn�t the case. Since it does, any numerical advantage the PS3 would have had is being meet with a competing counterpart.

Those 3 manufacturers haven�t done much to make Blu-ray competitive. Number of manufacturers for Blu-ray is irrelevant if prices don�t drop to where they�re actually competitive with the competition. Right now, it�s not, that�s why HDDVD outsells Blu-ray� not only the hardware, but also the software.

We�re talking about a movie format here, not a pc storage format.

Obviously the �$1000� price is use as a symbol, much like $500 is used for HDDVD. Even with the price drop, the cheapest blu-ray player is still almost 2x of HDDVD with others almost 3x.