Sony Blu-ray and PS3: Is recession the killer?
Filed under: Gaming, Sony Playstation 3 | By: Alan Ng
Posted on: November 13, 2008 | 37 Comments
This latest recession has hit all parts of the world, including the gaming industry it seems. After the initial success of the format war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, some executives in Hollywood are worried that the recession could have an effect on the Blu-Ray industry, in terms of the prices consumers have to pay to be able to watch the films.
Of course, now everyone is more cautious with their money and what they spend it on, but for those wanting to watch Blu-rays providing they do not have the equipment, could result in a very expensive package. We are talking about having to purchase a high spec HD TV along with a dedicated Blu-Ray player. While the PS3 has an integrated Blu-Ray player, it is certainly not cheap, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any price cuts along the way. Stand-alone Blu-Ray disc players themselves are also very expensive at the moment, so this could lead to consumers searching elsewhere in hope of watching content.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is currently a lot cheaper to buy at the moment, compared to Sony’s PS3, and with Microsoft preparing to offer films digitally, this could be another factor in loss of sales for Sony. It certainly will be an interesting period over Christmas in regards to Blu-Ray sales. Do any of you have any plans to purchase one? Leave your comments below.
Source: Read
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“As far as your Blu-Ray figures go anyway, they are a long LONG way off. I am not really sure where you have picked those figures up from unless you have generated them out of thin air to fight for your pointless cause.
Read my post - I was talking about the UK, not Europe. But as long as you bring it up…
“and the following year some 3.2 million PlayStation 3 consoles and 34,000 standalone players were installed, while 2.3 million Blu-ray discs sold through.”
Europe - 700 million people - 2.3 million discs sold. Haaaahaahaahhahahaha.
@MCM
Erm yeah….
“DVD-Video was first introduced into Western Europe in 1997, and the following year some 230,000 DVD players were installed and 2 million discs were sold through”
Only 2 million discs, in your words - “Haaaahaahaahhahahaha”.
What you have to realise is that, thats 2.3 million discs even entering and during a global recession quickly heading into a depression, the DVD performed worse than that, and that didn’t even have to put up with any form of recession, infact the DVD had some of the best years of the global economy.
“Read my post - I was talking about the UK, not Europe. But as long as you bring it up…”
I know you was talking about the UK, and like I said “And that was written at the beginning of this year, Blu-Ray has come on significantly since then”.
What I think your problem is MCM is that you must be a slight technophobe. Too afraid of change, either that or someone who has not been around long enough to witness the varying global market trends in technologies.
I think you need to do more topic related real world comparisons and less artificial or off-topic stat production.
Mog
http://Www.MogCast.coM
Dude, don’t even try to beat MCM. He is one of those guys that is ALWAYS right. I guess what he is saying is that you should believe everything you read online. Guess what I read the other day…A group of vampires invaded a small villiage in Mexico yesterday. They are slowly turning innocent children into vampires and by next week, all the original 48 states will be overrun by vampire children.
See, you read this so it must be true.
Mog, you make some great points. Especially about not having the technology yet for downloads. I live in one of the top 20 biggest cities in the U.S. (I would mention where I live, but I don’t want MCM to murder me in my sleep) and the fastest internet speed I can get is 1.5 MBPS. Are you kidding me?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10043631-1.html
Give it 10 years when an earlier generation get old enough to actually buy stuff for themselves, not their parents. Then we’ll talk about digital downloads.
“What I think your problem is MCM is that you must be a slight technophobe.”
I’m talking about downloads/streaming internet video, a tech which will become dominant over the next 5 years, and last for many, many years thereafter. I’m talking about having access to a hundred thousand HD video titles on demand at your fingertips.
You are talking about fumbling around with stacks of optical discs, which look remarkably like 45 rpm records from the 1960s and have been around since 1982.
Who is the technophobe?
@ifuwereahotdog
Haha, true that!
I fee your pain on the whole speed issue, I live on a farm in the middle of the Derbyshire/Yorkshire countryside in the UK. Used to be able to get 7.5mbps and used to run various online game servers until the local exchange shut down, we then got re-routed to another exchange and now we can barely scrape 2mbps, infact I even have a 3g+ data card which provides me with faster net than my main line, in fact my mobile phone has better net than my main line.
That was a good article that you linked me to by the way.
Haha @ vampire comment, is that Sunnydale v2.0? No longer Buffy Summers but instead Gabriela Rodriguez, lol.
@MCM
“I’m talking about downloads/streaming internet video, a tech which will become dominant over the next 5 years, and last for many, many years thereafter.”
Sir, do you really think digital downloads and streaming is a new technology? Its been available for a considerable amount of years now, the point is that the technology hasn’t & can’t “dominate” until everywhere is upgraded to higher standards like fiberoptic, and that won’t be done CERTAINLY not over the next 5 years simply because it would cost trillions and not many places are going to invest in that due to the cost factor.
Many places would just rather put up with things like Coaxial cabling until they absoloutly have to replace it because its fallen to bits, and thats not going to happen for a LONG time, and even then its not going to be a sudden change, it will be very gradual by which time Blu-Ray will have already won and another media format will allready be in full swing.
Not many places have fully upgraded to fiberoptic, and the only places that have are places that had nothing to upgrade and instead installed from scratch, like Estonia for example.
The point is progress for progress sake should be discouraged, because its not allways a step in the right direction. Look at the UK as being a shining example of the screw up of progress for progress sake, the UK used to be completeley covered by railways and one report was made which basicaly said that the railway was outdated technology, and due to that report 90% of the British railway network was left to rust and never used again, now the government has decided its absoloutly essential that the railway is brought back to its former glory because roads are too congested, carbon footprint is increasing too much, too many lorries on the road and the list goes on, its now going to cost them trillions just to re-comission the railway and thats not even including the cost of re-opening the industries that were connected to the railways to keep things running properley.
I am not saying that digital downloads are a bad thing, but I am saying that only having digital downloads is just ludicrous and is definately a step in the wrong direction. A healthy mixture of both is a wise idea.
Mog
http://Www.MogCast.coM
The biggest problem blu ray has is that what it offers is not enough to make people want to go out and replace their dvd collection with blu ray, no amount of facts and figures are going to get away from that. A minorityof people will embrace it and the rest will not see the point in spending the money. Even people i know who own a ps3 (Ill admit thats not many) dont really buy blu ray either.
I just cant see it going in the same direction. If it does take off and do well then great, but until it does Im going to stick with my dvds and play it safe. Only problem is im not the only one am I.
@Dave
But thats the point Dave,
“not enough to make people want to go out and replace their dvd collection with blu ray”
Nobody is going to go out and replace all their DVD collection with Blu-Ray, because why would they need to when their Blu-Ray players play DVD’s? But the point is a lot of Standalone and PS3 Blu-Ray player owners will buy the latest and/or greatest releases on Blu-Ray because why spend a few quid less and get the inferior DVD when for a few quid more you can have the far superior quality Blu-Ray version which “usually” contains the DVD in the case aswell.
But Blu-Ray as a media format also allows people to make their DVD pile smaller by adding them all to Blu-Ray discs if they wished.
As far as selection goes though, true not many previous film and show releases before blu-ray were re-done on Blu-Ray except certain action films and epics. But almost every decent movie since Blu-Ray launch has gone to Blu-Ray.
The Blu-Ray section in stores like HMV used to be neck and neck with HD-DVD a year and a half to 2 years ago, all they had between them was a section no wider than a house door, now HD-DVD has a section about 2 DVD cases wide, and Blu-Ray now has a section thats as long as an articulated lorry, not bad for a year and a half to 2 years. The point is Blu-Ray can’t be failing if stores aren’t just selling but are actually having to expand to meet the needs. and that kind of jump in a year and a half to 2 years is bloody impressive, considerably larger and quicker jump than DVD ever did. People had the same feeling about VHS against CD/DVD as you have about DVD and Blu-Ray. But eventualy people moved on to DVD, agree some people still use VHS (my grandparents for example, but they have a DVD player too). But most people eventually just scrapped their VHS Casettes and players, usually on carboots, garage sales and charity shops. Luckily I don’t think DVD’s will have the exact same fate as VHS, but I think the DVD players might. I think in 3 to 5 years time most people will have a healthy mixture of DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s.
Mog
http://Www.MogCast.coM