Sony to boost the PS3 with game / movie combo Blu-ray discs this year
by Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 12th 2009 at 12:58PM
With the PS3 not quite the slam-dunk Blu-ray player choice it once was for many due to cheaper competition, Sony's new strategy to move units will include hybrid game / movie releases. Citing a significant sales bump with The Dark Knight release, director of hardware marketing John Koller told Video Business that we can expect to see as many as two or three releases here this year. Of course, we can just imagine the reaction when (insert high profile release here) packs a demo for the game tie-in instead of a lossless audio soundtrack or other extras, but otherwise we'll have to wait and see what positive effect this has for the movie or gaming crowds.
Filed under: Blu-ray, Other hardware, Players, Sony
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bozster @ Feb 12th 2009 1:14PM
Makes you wonder.. with the games on there, special features.. it seems Sony will be releasing Blu-ray light movies with more compressed video/audio. It seems weird that HD DVD was not good enough due to it's 30gb discs and now this from Sony.
Hypocritical? You betcha.
Jimmy @ Feb 12th 2009 3:29PM
Actually Bozster, lots of movies are bigger than 30gb. Blackhawk Down, Bottle Rocket, All 3 Bourne Movies, and Close Encounters are all over 30GB that is just 6 of the movies off of my shelf without going past C. This is true for MPEG2, VC-1, and AVC encoded movies.
On the other hand the Kung Fu Panda movie file size is less than 23GB. And it has 6GB of space available on the disc. I never purchased the movie or the game but if they where to put both on one disk for $35 I might be interested. Cut out a couple of extras from the movie and free up 2 or 3 more GB and stick the game on there.
Bozster @ Feb 12th 2009 3:57PM
What game is 2-3 gb? This again goes against the claim that games require full BD for full potential aka MGS4.
Either way it's hypocrisy, unless they include a separate disc with the game in the package.
You will need at least 10gb for a game, add some extras and stuff it's a few GB.. so your movie on BD with a game will have to be 30gb or under. This requires more compression in video and audio streams.
I'm not saying that lower bitrates can't produce great images, I've seen movies that look great and get 5/5 rating with 15mbps encode, I'm just pointing out the whole hypocrisy about HD DVD and Blu-ray. The whole point initially was that 30gb is not sufficient that you MUST have 50gb in order to maximize quality of video and audio and now they are fitting everything on HD DVD size.
reallynotnick @ Feb 12th 2009 5:20PM
Well let's see TDK is 35GB, that leaves 15GB for the game. Considering all of these crappy movie games come out on the 360 also they are all under 8.5GB so there is plenty of room for the movie, game, and some crappy extra features.
Though generally most movies that are turned into games suck, and most games turned into movies suck so it does not really interest me. Not to mention they will still have to come up with a BD version sans game for people without a PS3, so at worst maybe the PS3 movie combo suffers a little on quality but the movie by it self is fine.
The real question is will these play in both a BD player and a PS3?
DrXym @ Feb 13th 2009 4:34AM
Bozster, as you should know all too well, games vary in size from 50Mb all the way up to 50Gb. I'm quite sure there are plenty of game / movie combinations that would comfortably fit on a single disk without compromising either. For example, cross platform games don't exceed 8Gb (due to the limitations of DVD) leaving a respectable 42Gb for a movie + features.
Bozster @ Feb 13th 2009 1:05PM
I think you guys are missing the point. It's going to affect quality either way.
Dr. Xym, usable size of Blu-ray disc is not 50gb it's 45gb. So add features and a game at 8.5gb you will have to pack a movie at 30gb or so.
They will have to cut corners. I'm just talking about hypocrisy here. They will have to lower the encodes to fit it and I find it really funny to see blu-ray die hards who were purists until this moment defend this as nothing is wrong.
Some of the people were the loudest how these type of things were unacceptable and now defend this.
DrXym @ Feb 14th 2009 4:27AM
No Bozster they will not have to cut corners due to the simple fact that not all disks use their full capacity.In the absence of knowing what movies / games are being considered, or the price of the disc you are spouting nonsense like usual.
Your maths is awful too since 45 less 8.5 is not 30. And Blu-Ray has 50Gb of usable space, 50Gb as per the industry definition for storage where 1Gb is 1,000,000,000 bytes. HD DVD also follows the industry definition. But hey, maybe disks only have 45Gb usable from that? Nope, the Godfather II disc uses 48,295,163,904 bytes just for its main feature.
But hey, if you fudge the value into gibibytes (counter to how storage capacity is usually measured) it looks less. So let's pretend it's just 45Gib and ignore that by the same measure HD DVD is 27.9Gib and DVD is 8Gib by the same criteria. Hey presto, another stupid Bozster comparison is born.
Big Sam @ Feb 12th 2009 1:19PM
Don't mess with the movie. Just point us to a location to download the game.
Sam @ Feb 12th 2009 1:35PM
So sony are now finding ways to fill the space that the "much needed" blu-ray disc provide?
Brian @ Feb 12th 2009 1:39PM
Just a idea, finish GT5!!!!
wysiwyg @ Feb 12th 2009 1:55PM
Funny. Most times game based movies aren't good enough to buy, and movie based games aren't worth $59.99 either. By combining the two, it's no brainer that I definite will not buy it if it's say, $75. Blu-ray are best if rented, especially if it's game based movie. :P
EJinID @ Feb 12th 2009 4:57PM
The best way to boost PS3 sales is to cut the prices of both the player and the movies, then you can pick and choose the ones that you like best.
Pingles @ Feb 12th 2009 3:07PM
Intriguing.
We bought the PS3 as a movie player and although I am an avid PC gamer I don't have a single game for my PS3.
It WOULD be interesting to try a few games. I can see buying a mediocre movie if they threw on a mediocre game with it.
DrXym @ Feb 12th 2009 3:10PM
Maybe it would be cheaper to buy some games from PSN. There are some excellent and really quite affordable games on there.
whookid @ Feb 12th 2009 3:22PM
Install times for movies anyone? Dont think so!
Sony, sort the games out and the console will sell, no one wants the 1000's of side features your making!!
Ryan @ Feb 13th 2009 7:54AM
speak for yourself. i wouldnt have bought the damn thing if it was only a gaming system.
Carl @ Feb 17th 2009 2:49PM
What makes you think you would have to "install" the movie? That doesn't make any sense.
imonit @ Feb 12th 2009 4:07PM
I actually wish Sony would focus on putting out combo disks. It's one of the best features that I sorely miss from HD DVD. Buy the movie once, use it in your laptop, in the van for the kids, portable DVD player, etc. Would also make it far simpler to convert it to your preferred format for use in portable devices such as the Ipod Touch, PSP, etc. Oh, nevermind. That would be consumer-friendly. I forgot I could just buy the UMD version. Thanks, Sony.
Bozster @ Feb 13th 2009 1:09PM
Well you want see it consumer way for sure. Instead of just including the dvd copy, studios are now adding digital copies and extra features and then charging you EXTRA for the privilege.
I'm not liking what they are doing one bit. They are completely phasing out cheaper no-digital copy discs and just selling, again, the more expensive version.
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Cheers, -RT.