Since the PS3 is said to loose money with every sale, this cut would finally be a welcome relief for Sony, but I doubt much of that will be reflected in the sales price (unless they have to drop prices in order to sell stuff).

I think it was said that with the 60GB PS3, they loose like $144 a console. So they'd still be loosing money but yes not nearly as much. Eventually it will be profitable. The only good thing for them is that both HD formats use the same laser so regardless of who wins, the prices on them will come down.

If they're able to cut costs that much, they'll have to do a price drop considering their PS3 sales are moving about as slow as a Scion.

Like everyone else, Sony is not looking to make money off of the consoles themselves. Rather, their profit comes from the games. They sort of purposely lose money to attract more sales of the console, so they would have a better market for their games. So that $100 drop in production should make its way to the pricetags on the storeracks.

Thomas, aren't all console units sold at a loss? I thought they all were and the profit is made on games and accessories...

The things are just cluttering up the shelves in stores everywhere.
This is just the kind of break Sony needs to drop the prices on the unit. Though it will still be out of the range that I consider reasonable for what basically amounts to a toy.

i say cut as much as you can. The xbox360 elite is already so close to the price of a ps3 with the added hd-dvd drive (which is utter stupid to not be included in the first place). This price cut could also go for standalone blu-ray drives, which is a nice thing :)

consumers shouldn't be forced to buy a blu ray player when it doesn't actually help games.

99% of gamers and 99% of developers and 100% of people working at nintendo and microsoft believe the cost of HD dvd/blu ray is not worth the benefit.

sony is trying to push a high def disc medium on the public, and they rejected it.

the gaming industry needs competition, right now, or gaming itself will lose it's share of the entertainment industry.

No...Nintendo is making a profit on every Wii sold

In fact, they were going to sell it for $200 until they heard the price tag for PS3...at which point they raised their prices to $250

I think I would need some proof of your "statistics" because I believe that is BS. The benefit of the extra space will be shown in the next couple of years, but I guess a lot of develops and gamers just don't take the time to look into what will happen tomorrow and instead focus on today. Look at your games and how much space they use.

Is it not foreseeable that certain games made in the future would be able to take up more than 8GB of disc space (This is not a computer) especially when they can't rely on good compression some maybe but nothing major. I think RPG's are likely to be the first games to go over 8.5gb of space and I am sure gamers would prefer not to use 2-4discs to play their games. (FF7-9)

A Wii costs Nintendo about $160 to manufacture, so one could safely assume that they're making about $50 a shot with the rest going to marketing, shipping & resellers pockets.

In answer to caqde, the extra space of blue ray disc may be needed for games that are sveral years down the road, not games that are needed now. Sony is forcing gamers to buy there cutting edge technology now when it cost a fortune to establish the standard on the gamer's money, not because it will bring a big advantage to gamers.

When the extra space really becomes needed in a few years, HD drives will probably be comodity items costing not much more than DVD players now, PS3 buyers will have had to purchase theirs at the current premium price thanks to sony!

If the PS3 had come out with a DVD drive and sold for $400 I would probably have bought one, with the current price tag it's too expensive for gaming alone and there is no enough BD content to justify the price: there are a few movies, but I am more interested in TV series and anime, none of which is availlable in HD (most of the time because it was shooted in SD anyway).

I think xbox got it right, the consumer should have a choice as to whether or not they want to pay extra for the hd/blu ray drives. i know that i wouldnt want to spend extra for one of the drives, at least for another year (estimation - depends what happens on the market).
mind you, the only console i've got is the wii, and it the 1st one ive ever bought. I'm mainly a computer guy and got the wii for the innovative game play.....

With HD videos and Surround sound music/audio being used for PS3 games I would not be surprised if the RPG specifically would fill up an 8.5GB DVD really quick.
I recently downloaded a 1080p quality video that was only 2 minutes long that took up 180MB of HardDrive space! And that was encoded in H.264. Imagine a game like Xenosaga whose intro movie alone was over an hour long trying to fit on a 8.5GB disk. The INTRO movie alone would take up 5GB! You would have to switch disks just to play the game at this size! I'd image the game would be like 3 discs if they tried to provide 1080P quality videos.

So yes this was a move to allow for higher quality games and specifically to allow for developers to provide HD quality Video in their games.

If XBOX was going to have games needing the extra space from an HD-DVD, they would have built the drive into the box and not as an add-on. The HD-DVD drive is for movies and not for the games.
This, in essence, gives people the OPTION to buy it. Again, key word here is OPTION.

it is true that the technology sony is offerring is way in the future which should not be sold to consumers but only to developers and such. just like intel who are selling their super duper high end processors to servers and businesses that need and use them. it would be quite a waste of money to buy something which is meant for something or for the future.

just as what nintendo has stated, hd isn't really going super fast here now. i'm more then sure that it'll fully be in full use in the next 2-3 years from now. which would allow nintendo to develop an hd based game system.

not everyone really cares about hd. why because it's too expensive to support it [to have it]. the cost to have an lcd or plasma or whatever screen to support 1080p is too expensive. for a general and casual gamer, spending like 2000 dollars for a tv monitor is a little to excessive knowing that the money could be used to spend on other things. even know, buying a tv that supports hd is still expensive. it cost about 500 dollars for a 32 inch screen tv and it supports 720p but at the cost of picture quality as well as structural quality. but of course there are those who will refute by saying, you spend on what you get but of course not everyone cares or can afford such expensive commodity.

all in all, not everyone cares about having super duper clear tv sets, but as long as it's good as dvd quality then that's more then fine.

PS2 came with a DVD drive and ppl said that it was a waste of money cuz games wouldn't be as big as a DVD (4.7/8.5). So, 700mb was good enough.

7ys later? PS2 still selling more than any console.

Now it's the same with PS3. Same rumors, same "problems"..

Ah, and you CAN add a HD to the PS2. :)
Now you do have a HD to the PS3.

In the game side, developers of GTA IV are struggling to do a 360 version due to the "Core" version (without HD).

Now, 1080p, well, I do love to watch videos with the best possible quality, as well as my games so I bet Blu-Ray Disk was a great choice for the PS3.
Why not? 25gb of space instead of 8.5gb? Or even 4.7gb if compared to the majority of PS2 games (GT4 and God of War 2 are dual layer).

That said, I believe SONY did a great job with the PS3. And even costing as much as it does it still selling. The PS2 had that too, it was 'too expensive' when it was launched.

so what? You're going to see a surge of older console selling since it's cheaper than the high dollar system Sony is trying to sell. If you're bringing up your older console to make some sort of a point, it's proving that Sony's Cancer curing PS3 is a glorified, overpriced BluRay DVD player that is not selling.