PS3 production begins..

LookingFor

..those people who make motherboards, Asus, have started assembling PS3 consoles. They got 200,000 sets of components in June, and started shipping consoles early July. The plan is to get them up to 1m per month by September!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20060718235111.html

Maybe this will give Sony a better idea of numbers, so we can actually start getting proper preorders here :rolleyes:

EasyBoy1974

...but the games on play.com are at least €15 more than x360 ... couple this with the console price & unlikelyhood of getting any on these shore before xmas and we're going to need long, deep and patient pockets ... <sigh>

Creamy Goodness

yes, but isn't that just an educated guess. they may not be that price when they come out. but one thing for sure is they'll will be expensive in the shops.

EasyBoy1974

agreed - bluray will make sure of that!

steviec

Isn't the cost of the disk itself around about 1% of the price you actually pay? Most of it is covering development costs, profit, and good old Mr. Shopkeeper's whopping great cut.

They'll be no more expensive than 360 games, maybe when it first comes out shops will certainly try to take advantage of early adopters, but it'll normalise soon enough I imagine.

Noelie

the cost of the disc will probably be more if they are using blueray disc's

EasyBoy1974

As far as i understand it the additional (not insubstantial) cost of bluray discs comes from having to refit DVD factories to make them, plus the economies of scale (or lack thereof). These factors may or may not even out depending upon whether bluray is the dominant HD-DVD disc of choice. My bet is that it will be - PS3 will do for bluray what PS2 did for DVD.

Retr0gamer

EasyBoy1974 wrote:

My bet is that it will be - PS3 will do for bluray what PS2 did for DVD.

So it will give us poor composite playback and a disc drive that won't read a slightly scratched disk and shortens it's lifetime subtantially when used to read DVDs?

Creamy Goodness

Retr0gamer wrote:

So it will give us poor composite playback and a disc drive that won't read a slightly scratched disk and shortens it's lifetime subtantially when used to read DVDs?

exactly

TuneR

Retr0gamer wrote:

So it will give us poor composite playback and a disc drive that won't read a slightly scratched disk and shortens it's lifetime subtantially when used to read DVDs?

Sony are so good at this dont you think

MontgomeryClift

EasyBoy1974 wrote:

My bet is that it will be - PS3 will do for bluray what PS2 did for DVD.

Probably won't though, because DVD is still relatively new and is not VHS. Having a console that can play movies is no longer a big deal, even with the new format they're trying to force on us.

Oh, and US$640 for the cheapest PS3. LOL.

shortys94

theres a newish ps3 official european site when you go to www.playstation.ie and then click on ps3 on the bottom of the page, sorry if this is old news

projectmayhem

MontgomeryClift wrote:

Probably won't though, because DVD is still relatively new and is not VHS. Having a console that can play movies is no longer a big deal, even with the new format they're trying to force on us.

Oh, and US$640 for the cheapest PS3. LOL.

DVD is over a decade old, it's time to move on. games companies have maxed out the capacity of dual-layered dvd's (look at how rockstar had to tone down the audio in SA to fit that game on a single disc), so we need new technology. movies are a by-product of that demand for more data because they really only add HD quality and the java virtual machine (cooler menus, mini-games related to your movies etc.)

and $600 is the more expensive ps3

MontgomeryClift

projectmayhem wrote:

DVD is over a decade old, it's time to move on.

How many DVDs did you own in 1996?

Edit: And Sony isn't including Blu-Ray for the benefit of games, with movies being a by-product. Sony is trying to flog Blu-Ray by way of the PS3 and expects gamers to pay a couple of hundred Euro extra for their new console as a result.

projectmayhem wrote:

and $600 is the more expensive ps3

€499 ~ US$640

iregk

DVD is 10 years old but as always it takes about 5 years for a format change to really take hold. DVD only became common place in home and replacing VHS from 2000/2001 onwards.

As said Sony aint including blu ray for the benefit of games either, they are hoping to shift the market away from dvd to the new blue ray format and are using the ps3 as their marketing tool in order to do this. Take the average lifespan of a console generation to be 5 years. By the time Blu Ray or HD DVD takes over regular dvd another console will be in the offering by which time competetors will have switced to what ever the dominant system is.

projectmayhem

MontgomeryClift wrote:

How many DVDs did you own in 1996?

Edit: And Sony isn't including Blu-Ray for the benefit of games, with movies being a by-product. Sony is trying to flog Blu-Ray by way of the PS3 and expects gamers to pay a couple of hundred Euro extra for their new console as a result.

€499 ~ US$640

i owned approximately 0 dvd's in 1996, doesn't take from the fact that it existed, and became very popular relatively quickly.

and at developer conferences sony hosts in the last 3 years a huge issue has been that the medium for putting games onto disks and into consoles has been limiting them, so keeping to DVD technology was out of the question for sony, so they began work on blu-ray as a means of getting more data onto a disk. phil harrison has even come out to say the next step is pure digital distribution... sony are hoping that blu-ray is the last time they have to give out physical copies of games. i'd expect ps3 to make the first moves to proper digital distribution of full titles (not just the xbla type games)...

also, €499 in europe, $499 in america. europe gets shafted, not america.

iregk

projectmayhem wrote:

i'd expect ps3 to make the first moves to proper digital distribution of full titles

Your Sony fanboi-ism knows no bounds. This has already been done on the 360 and will be done on the Wii also.

Ciaran500

projectmayhem wrote:

and at developer conferences sony hosts in the last 3 years a huge issue has been that the medium for putting games onto disks and into consoles has been limiting them, so keeping to DVD technology was out of the question for sony

Then why do they never use a full DVD9 disk? TBH what do you expect devs at a Sony conference to say.

projectmayhem wrote:

so they began work on blu-ray as a means of getting more data onto a disk. phil harrison has even come out to say the next step is pure digital distribution... sony are hoping that blu-ray is the last time they have to give out physical copies of games. i'd expect ps3 to make the first moves to proper digital distribution of full titles (not just the xbla type games)...

So they let games get bigger and move towards digital distribution

projectmayhem wrote:

also, €499 in europe, $499 in america. europe gets shafted, not america.

Isn't it confirmed that there will be no €499 version at launch.

monument

MontgomeryClift wrote:

How many DVDs did you own in 1996?

The question should be "how many VHS videos did you own in 1996?” - Probably fewer then how many DVDs you own now.

MontgomeryClift wrote:

Edit: And Sony isn't including Blu-Ray for the benefit of games, with movies being a by-product. Sony is trying to flog Blu-Ray by way of the PS3 and expects gamers to pay a couple of hundred Euro extra for their new console as a result.

It doesn’t matter, it will benefit games. If not at the start, some time down the road.

iregk wrote:

Your Sony fanboi-ism knows no bounds. This has already been done on the 360 and will be done on the Wii also.

It's a no-brainier, more storage will allow for more content (or more detailed content) on a disk.

The Wii is still be said to be no more then a glorified GameCube. But if Nintendo can provide their titles backed by large install bases, and brilliant third party support as well - then brilliant, I cant wait.

Ciaran500 wrote:

So they let games get bigger and move towards digital distribution

If the PS3 has any think of a life span as the PS2, maybe, just maybe, Ireland might have caught up with the rest of the developed world in broadband terms. At least we may get to where they are now and they’ll have even better connections...

Ireland has ‘worst broadband in Europe’, says [new] Eircom-owner

Ciaran500 wrote:

Isn't it confirmed that there will be no €499 version at launch.

No, as far as I know there's still confusion on that point. The UK and Ireland were said to be not getting it at all, Sony in the UK drew back on this (about a week ago, I think). But there's still confusion as to if they will be there at launch. A lot of retailers apparently don’t want them as they didn’t want the lower 360s (at launch anyway).

projectmayhem

iregk wrote:

Your Sony fanboi-ism knows no bounds. This has already been done on the 360 and will be done on the Wii also.

i have a 360 and have yet to download a full game from xbl. i even explicitly said proper games, not xbla style game. i mean a-la downloading half life 2 via steam type stuff.

Ciaran500 wrote:

Then why do they never use a full DVD9 disk? TBH what do you expect devs at a Sony conference to say.

they don't use dvd9 because they want their own format... they're a business. also, blu-ray (in the long run) allows for more data on a disc.

monument wrote:

Ireland has ‘worst broadband in Europe’, says [new] Eircom-owner

isn't that eircoms fault in the first place? :rolleyes:

wayne040576

projectmayhem wrote:

isn't that eircoms fault in the first place? :rolleyes:

Exactly. They need to get the finger out. Or somebody needs to make them take it out.

monument

It would be firstly the original owner’s fault for selling such important infrastructure. Secondly, and only secondly, if we were to take the word of the new owner, it would also be the fault of the owners and managers between then and now.

Ciaran500

projectmayhem wrote:

they don't use dvd9 because they want their own format... they're a business. also, blu-ray (in the long run) allows for more data on a disc.

What I meant was if devs are already looking for more space, how come they never fill a full DVD9.

iregk

The whole blueray offers more data is a bit of a hit and miss argument. Toshiba have HD dvd's that are holding 200gig!!! Granted this is not close to being released to the market yet but they are there. Standard HD DVD's can hold up to 45gig, a mere 5 gig less than a Blue-Ray disc. They have also got 100gig standard DVD's also...

Basically what is happening is what Sony don't want. The reason mini disc failed is that Sony wanted to keep the rights so that when any recording company or software company etc... wanted to supply on MD they paid sony a royalty. This was not the case with CD and the mini disc died. DVD was the very same and open house format. Blue Ray Sony are attempting the mini disc scenario all over again and trying to force their way in. They got bitten big time with Beta -v- VHS and want to recover their mistake. They failed with MD and no with BR want to give it another go.

projectmayhem

Ciaran500 wrote:

What I meant was if devs are already looking for more space, how come they never fill a full DVD9.

some have, like i said.. GTA did. a bunch of others have too. the problem with filling it up completely is that loading times go way up without clever algorithms (especially on PS2), so it's easier to have less impressive art assets or whatever then to write big algorithms. with the new generation, devs want the power with the capacity on discs, which is exactly what sony is giving them... but of course, sony can't win no matter what they do or who they please

iregk wrote:

The whole blueray offers more data is a bit of a hit and miss argument. Toshiba have HD dvd's that are holding 200gig!!! Granted this is not close to being released to the market yet but they are there. Standard HD DVD's can hold up to 45gig, a mere 5 gig less than a Blue-Ray disc. They have also got 100gig standard DVD's also...

not quite actually. HD-DVD is cheaper, but only on the single-layered option, after that manufactering goes up to the same as blu-ray, which kind of defeats the purpose... hence why dell have sided with blu-ray and jumped onto the bd-rom board.

also, blu-ray discs can go upto 4 layers without making any big leaps in technology (hence plastic casing, so you don't compensate layers with the cover stickers like on DVD)

GrumPy

Can anyone honestly see hd-dvd/bd discs taking off anytime soon? I reckon if either of them will take off, it will be two, or three years down the road.

monument

iregk wrote:

The whole blueray offers more data is a bit of a hit and miss argument. Toshiba have HD dvd's that are holding 200gig!!! Granted this is not close to being released to the market yet but they are there. Standard HD DVD's can hold up to 45gig, a mere 5 gig less than a Blue-Ray disc. They have also got 100gig standard DVD's also...

“a bit of a hit and miss argument” with films, yes. With games, its still not a sure thing but it’s a far safer bet.

iregk wrote:

Basically what is happening is what Sony don't want. The reason mini disc failed is that Sony wanted to keep the rights so that when any recording company or software company etc... wanted to supply on MD they paid sony a royalty. This was not the case with CD and the mini disc died.

The MD "died" because they were backward compared to their competitor. The MD went up against hard drive and flash MP3 players, not the CD.

iregk wrote:

DVD was the very same and open house format. Blue Ray Sony are attempting the mini disc scenario all over again and trying to force their way in. They got bitten big time with Beta -v- VHS and want to recover their mistake. They failed with MD and no with BR want to give it another go.

I can remember just about a year or two ago someone was saying the Memory Stick was dead.

iregk

We could go back and forth all night long with this. Dell have also signed up with HD-DVD!

Film studios, Fox, Universal, Paramount, Dreamworks and many others have signed with both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD and are currently releasing titles on both. My guess is you will see a lot of multi platform players hit the market that will take both HD and DR...

iregk

monument wrote:

The MD "died" because they were backward compared to their competitor. The MD went up against hard drive and flash MP3 players, not the CD.

The MD came out in 1992!!! I can't remember many mp3 players being on sale back then... I got my first MD walkman in 95, again 3 years before mp3 was release as a codec never mind a walkman...

The MD was sony's way of replacing the cd, I can still remember the adds. CD=Fragile MD=Tough (cut to picture of skateboarder going over a mini disc picking it up and putting it into his player)

monument wrote:

I can remember just about a year or two ago someone was saying the Memory Stick was dead.

The memory stick in its first form is long since dead much like compact flash but it did pave the way for many better more diverse alternatives: SD, MMC etc...

Anyway thats all way too off topic

Ciaran500

projectmayhem wrote:

some have, like i said.. GTA did. a bunch of others have too. the problem with filling it up completely is that loading times go way up without clever algorithms (especially on PS2), so it's easier to have less impressive art assets or whatever then to write big algorithms. with the new generation, devs want the power with the capacity on discs, which is exactly what sony is giving them... but of course, sony can't win no matter what they do or who they please

None of the GTA's are bigger than a DVD5 and any game I can find that is near the DVD9 limit is full of FMV.

But with more power and especailly with multiple threads on 360 and PS3 much more compression can be used. This isn't only nesecary for fitting it onto the disk but means you have to move less data around.

monument

iregk wrote:

The MD came out in 1992!!! I can't remember many mp3 players being on sale back then... I got my first MD walkman in 95, again 3 years before mp3 was release as a codec never mind a walkman...

I don’t remember commenting on when it was first release. From DVDs to PS2s their peaks were a good distance away from their launches.

MP3 players killed the mass market for the MD format. If around the time MP3 players were getting very popular, all you’d have to do look at the Argos catalogue, how just before MP3 players started to gain more and more space there was a large range of MD players.

iregk wrote:

The memory stick in its first form is long since dead much like compact flash but it did pave the way for many better more diverse alternatives: SD, MMC etc...

The Memory Stick is very much so alive. And if Sony and SanDisk can actually continue to provide larger sticks (with a decrease in prices) the format may live on for some time.

iregk

monument wrote:

I don’t remember commenting on when it was first release. From DVDs to PS2s their peaks were a good distance away from their launches.

True but nobody disputed that!

monument wrote:

MP3 players killed the mass market for the MD format.

The MD was dead before MP3 players really started to take hold. The mp3 player in their second wave when they started to get serious put the final nail in the coffin but it failed to beat the CD walkman by then anyway!

wayne040576

iregk wrote:

True but nobody disputed that!



The MD was dead before MP3 players really started to take hold. The mp3 player in their second wave when they started to get serious put the final nail in the coffin but it failed to beat the CD walkman by then anyway!

True. By the the mid 90's the MD was already dead. The only people seriously using them were radio stations because they made it easy to edit content for interviews etc. Oh and bootleggers, they were good to bring to gigs because the recording quality was great.

projectmayhem

Irish GrumPy wrote:

Can anyone honestly see hd-dvd/bd discs taking off anytime soon? I reckon if either of them will take off, it will be two, or three years down the road.

honestly, the only reason i can see either take off is if something pushes them to take off. HD-DVD has been out in the states since may and has sold very few pieces of hardware. this is for two reasons, 1) people waiting to see, and 2) people not giving a crap.

we're arguing this out, but in reality, the general public don't give a rats ass. and if you go out and talk to casual gamers, the general consensus is that they'll get a ps3, even if it is €600. like it or not, brand loyalty comes before anything in business.

i don't really see why hd-dvd would take off... blu-ray will drop in price eventually, holds more data and has more big companies behind it (most if not all the major movie studios, most of the major PC manufactorers, most importantly Dell, and so on)... but even more important, if ps3 takes off, there's no reason for ps3 owners to go buy a hd-dvd player.

and at launch sony will sell every single ps3 they make, so assuming by the end of the year they make/sell about 3 million consoles (not sure of their target), that's more likely to be far more blu-ray players out in homes then hd-dvd players... so why spend another €1000 on another movie player when you have one with all the same movies available?

basically, it's the exact same reason DVD won the fight a few years ago.

also, isn't MD used a lot in the radio industry?

wayne040576

projectmayhem wrote:

also, isn't MD used a lot in the radio industry?

Yeah I mentioned that in my last post. I know it was used a lot a few years ago because of the editing power. They made it very easy to get interviews and even track lists together. I know a few of my mates used to be involved in that area and used MD a lot. If you have a decent quality mic, the portable devices were really good for interviewing. I remember hearing an interview that one of my mates had done at a gig and I was blown away by the sound quality at the time. But I honestly don't know if things have changed and how much they are used today.

LookingFor

iregk wrote:

We could go back and forth all night long with this. Dell have also signed up with HD-DVD!

Film studios, Fox, Universal, Paramount, Dreamworks and many others have signed with both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD and are currently releasing titles on both. My guess is you will see a lot of multi platform players hit the market that will take both HD and DR...

I'm not sure where you've got your info, because nearly all of it is wrong. Dell & Fox are supporting Bluray exclusively at the moment. Paramount is supporting both. Universal is supporting HD-DVD exclusively at the moment.

The current movie studio support among major studios is:

Blu-ray
Fox
Sony Pictures
MGM
Disney
Warner Bros
Paramount/Dreamworks


HD-DVD
Warner Bros
Paramount/Dreamworks
Universal

Universal is the only major studio not supporting Bluray (and I'm guessing that will change by next year). Combined, Bluray claims access to 90% of Hollywood content, while HD-DVD can only claim access to half of the Hollywood catalogue.

The general trend among computer and consumer electronics companies is overwhelmingly to support Blu-ray. HD-DVD has very little support from CE companies.

monument

Sony: PS3 not in production (says Reg)
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9773285

wayne040576

monument wrote:

Sony: PS3 not in production (says Reg)
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9773285

I think they've also reduced the number of units for the US on launch down to 700,000.

projectmayhem

monument wrote:

Sony: PS3 not in production (says Reg)
http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9773285

kaz said this a week or two ago. slightly worrying tbh, but then again, i'm not sure how difficult it is to put all the bits of a console together before selling them to the scum (us). anyone had any idea how long before sale the 360 went into production?

wayne040576 wrote:

I think they've also reduced the number of units for the US on launch down to 700,000.

hadn't heard that, but it doesn't matter, there'll be massive shortages no matter how many consoles they have

madmarco245

Well, you could start production a few months earlier and make about 5-10 million PS3's, but if people don't buy them, there'll be a HUGE loss, so by releasing about 1 million for each country, if they're gone within the WEEK then they'll be expanding production, but 700,000 for a continent!?:eek: That's insane, 35,000 for each state of America??? I suppose there'll be around the same for Ireland considering we're an expanding economy, and PS3 will help with it. I estimate about 5-10 units going to average games shop, probably a bit more will be going to the "Game" branch in Henry Street, Dublin. So basically, they'll be seeing whether the small numbers of units in America will mean a bigger demand and a small number in Ireland would be any different, it's Sony playing it safe, well, that's my theory, like it or not!

In other words, if Sony are to get to their target of 5 million units, they better get off their arse, and skip nap time...;)

Explosive_Cornflake

projectmayhem wrote:

on. games companies have maxed out the capacity of dual-layered dvd's (look at how rockstar had to tone down the audio in SA to fit that game on a single disc),

GTASA was on DVD5

projectmayhem

Explosive_Cornflake wrote:

GTASA was on DVD5

just checked that up and you're right. my bad.

but just replace GTA:SA with GT4 or MGS2: Substance and you have the same argument.

while we're on it, Resistence: Fall of Man has used up 22Gig of the blu-ray disc... which straight off the bat starts to justify the format as a medium for putting out games. of course we've to wait and see how good the transfer rate works (72mbps, since ps3 is x2)