[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by hyteckit 

I'm responding to someones argument about economy of scale about 3 pages back.

Sony is losing sh*tloads of money of the PS3. Sony is lost over 800 million dollars the previous quarter on the PS3 division having to sell the PS3 at a huge lost. Sony needs to be profitable on the PS3 division soon or it'll be in serious trouble.

Actually Sony is planing on being profitable this year on the PS3. The PS3 is all about long term, if BR wins they will make piles of money over the next 5-10 years.

Just look at the PS2.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Oh trust me, HD-DVD fans know it is show over for HD and movies. Why do you think since the announcement the discussion has suddenly moved to "we don't need anything on optical, we should all just download them".

I made the same argument as I did back in November when I purchase my HDDVD player. Most people are happy with their DVD players and aren't willing to spend the extra money on Hidef. Most people don't have a Hidef set or a surround sound.

My argument has always been the same. The Hidef standards need more than just better picture quality and audio quality over DVD. It needs something else to distinguish itself from DVD such as PIP and web interactivity. Those arguments haven't changed.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Actually Sony is planing on being profitable this year on the PS3. The PS3 is all about long term, if BR wins they will make piles of money over the next 5-10 years.

Just look at the PS2.

Of course Sony plans to be profitable this year. It plans to be profitable last year. They also plan that HDDVD is dead 6 months ago.

When you are selling PS3 at a huge lost, attachment rates matters a lot. Attachment rates is horrible for both Bluray movies and PS3 games. It's not enough to cover the lost.

[ort888]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Actually Sony is planing on being profitable this year on the PS3. The PS3 is all about long term, if BR wins they will make piles of money over the next 5-10 years.

Just look at the PS2.

The PS2 is still successful because it's building on it's past success. It has a huge library of cheap games. If the PS3 remains in third, it won't have the same legs the PS1 and PS2 had.

[TETENAL]

I'm not a native speaker either, but I think it's called "the loss".

Anyway, attachment rates matter (of games especially), but what matters the more is profit over the lifespan of the console. What they lose now they will earn in the later years of the console lifespan. Just like they did with the Playstation 2.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

PSP Blu-ray Transfer: Everything You Wanted to Know About Blu-ray-to-PSP Movie Transfers

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by hyteckit 

Of course Sony plans to be profitable this year. It plans to be profitable last year. They also plan that HDDVD is dead 6 months ago.

When you are selling PS3 at a huge lost, attachment rates matters a lot. Attachment rates is horrible for both Bluray movies and PS3 games. It's not enough to cover the lost.

Oh gimmie a break. Toshiba was losing money on every HD-DVD player in hopes it would win. You wanna talk losses look at them.

And again BR attachment rate is better.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

PSP Blu-ray Transfer: Everything You Wanted to Know About Blu-ray-to-PSP Movie Transfers

So Sony gave up on UMD finally?

Sony admitting not everyone cares about Hidef and people might want to watch the movie in much lower quality on a PSP instead?

[climber]

Originally Posted by ort888 

I think downloads, DVDs and Blu-ray can and will co-exist. They have to.

I don't think DVD are going away anytime soon and Blu-ray will probably never surpass DVD. Blu-ray will always be a fringe product. It will be viable, but fringe. At best I think we'll see Blu-ray with about 25% of the sales of DVD.

Downloads will eventually win, but it will be about 5-10 years before it's convenient enough to make a huge dent.

While I think the software side of things may go the way you are saying, I think the hardware will mostly be Blu-ray in the not to distant future. It was not that long ago that most DVD players did not upscale video or HDMI ports. Now it is pretty hard to find one that won't. I do not see manufactures adding to their DVD player lineup in the future, but I do see them adding Blu-ray capabilities. Joe consumer only cares that it will still play his existing DVD collection, and will be thrilled that it can do proper HD on his new TV. The public will be snapping them up in comparison to the last year. Just look at the TV's in Best buy right now, how many SD sets do they sell. Very soon the same will be the case for DVD players.

I think a lot of people have stood on the sidelines during this little format war, I know I did. But now that a clear winner is in sight, I have finally ordered my player. I am getting the new Denon 3800. It is a very expensive player (at $2,000), but I am hooking it up to 800 series B&W's powered by a Anthem amp and preamp.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Oh gimmie a break. Toshiba was losing money on every HD-DVD player in hopes it would win. You wanna talk losses look at them.

Very true.

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

And again BR attachment rate is better.

Not even close.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

In player sales they're right about there (total of 131.9 million DVD players sold as of 8/03/07). But in disc sales I wouldn't believe it.

I was specifically talking about disc sales, although I'm not sure if they're talking revenue or unit sales.

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

And again BR attachment rate is better.

I get the impression that you don't know what the term "attachment rate" means. You've said this several times, but it's simply wrong. The BD disc attachment sales rate is quite a bit lower. Attachment rate is discs sold per player, not overall discs sold.

[hyteckit]

I was at the Sony booth during CES looking at the PSP. They have Resident Evil playing on it. I think it's UMD format. Video quality looks absolutely freaking horrible. Movies and TV shows from iTunes look much better.

[hyteckit]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Oh gimmie a break. Toshiba was losing money on every HD-DVD player in hopes it would win. You wanna talk losses look at them.

And again BR attachment rate is better.

Again, attachment rate for Bluray is about 1 and for HDDVD it's about 2.67. Attachment rate for HDDVD is 267% the rate of Bluray.

[Oversoul]

Originally Posted by hyteckit 

I'm responding to someones argument about economy of scale about 3 pages back.

Sony is losing sh*tloads of money of the PS3. Sony is lost over 800 million dollars the previous quarter on the PS3 division having to sell the PS3 at a huge lost. Sony needs to be profitable on the PS3 division soon or it'll be in serious trouble.

If everyone is just buying PS3 as a Bluray player, Sony is in deep sh*t. The more people buy PS3, the more money Sony losses. The attachment rate for Bluray movies to PS3 is about 1. Hardly enough to cover the loss of $200 to $300 per PS3 sold.

Seriously, get some perspective! Especially long term perspective. You keep mentioning the previous quarter but fail to consider the next 5-10 years. As I've noted before, the game console industry is unique and not equally comparable to computers or even consumer electronics. You seem to gloss over words just like you gloss over HD DVD standalone sales numbers to fit your own prejudices, so perhaps you should reread the distinctions there.

And you think manufacturing costs on the PS3 are fixed for all eternity? Here's a hint, they're not. Component prices and thus manufacturing costs continue to go down, not merely as a factor of how many units are sold, but because economy of scale in terms of the parts in the PS3 from last year are largely going to be the same parts that go into the PS3s of next year or two, three years from now. (Think how many times the PS2 got a product refresh in its 7 year product life.) Sony can therefore place a huge order on components knowing with certainty that the same components will be used in millions of units from those on the assembly line right now to units that haven't even manufactured yet. (As an aside, Sony took a huge loss early on with the inclusion of a Blu-ray drive because the blue laser that reads HD media was in short supply (and thus expensive) -- not so anymore.) You don't have the same economies of scale with computers for obvious reasons and CE standalones get product refreshes at least every year. In turn, all these product refreshes require occasional and significant component updates that place an inherent limit on the number of components that are manufactured, lest they become obsolete before they're put into an end product. Again, the PS3 and game consoles in general are not as tightly subject to such limitations and during their lifetimes will see price reductions that are a factor of progressively lower manufacturing costs, and do realize profitability per unit for their manufacturers.

[Eug]

Toshiba HD DVD press conference at CES (Video)

Originally Posted by hyteckit 

I was at the Sony booth during CES looking at the PSP. They have Resident Evil playing on it. I think it's UMD format. Video quality looks absolutely freaking horrible. Movies and TV shows from iTunes look much better.

Really? Stuff on iTunes looks pretty bad (although it would look pretty good on an iPod).

[pooka]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

PSP Blu-ray Transfer: Everything You Wanted to Know About Blu-ray-to-PSP Movie Transfers

So.. umm.. it's essentially useless unless you're already part of the Sony ecosystem. Nice. Score one for the people.

[hyteckit]

It you are losing $800 million per quarter, can you really last 5 years? How many billions of dollars can Sony lose a year? They already sold off their cell processor division to Toshiba from what I've heard. Toshiba was even demonstrating the Cell processor at CES.

If you average to about $500 million per quarter in loss, that's $2 billion in loss for the year in the PS3 division.