# Playstation 3 to cost $500 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2005, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588 "2005-01-07T16:45:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/41 "2005-01-07T23:47:21Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > You can get a DVD player for \<$50. Does anyone use the PS2 to play DVDs? I doubt very many people do. I do. I have a real dvd player, too, but that’s in the bedroom and I don’t yet feel it necessary to spend $50 to get something for my living room that will only do what my PS2 can do for free at this point. ---
**Author:** ![akifani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ba0ec/32.png) [@akifani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/akifani)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/42 "2005-01-08T23:32:49Z")
Why is nobody mentionning the fact that PS3 will double as a BluRay player? Much as the Dvd player function of the PS2 made it so popular, i have no doubt that the appeal of a nextgen console that doubles as a BluRay player will do wonders for the PS3. This year, all tvs bigger than 27" will have to be HDTV enabled by law. Give this another year for prices to drop to acceptable levels and for HDTV to become widespread and lo and behold: It’s 2006, and the PS3 comes out. Just in the nick of time to save the day. On paper, Sony has done a magnificent planning job. blooming HDTV use makes a console that can play HD games and HD bluray movies very appealing. So people buy PS3s. Some people that bought the PS3 just for the games now have an incentive to buy an HDTV to get the most of them and guess who sells HDTVs? Why! It’s our friend Sony! More sales for them. But that’s not the end of it! BluRay is competing with HD-DVD and all of a sudden, Millions of PS3s find their way in the living room. This means millions of BluRay players are sitting there waiting for BluRay movies. A huge incentive for studios that previously only supported HD-DVD to start supporting BluRay which causes HD-DVD to die. Now that BluRay is the winning format, sony sells more BluRay players. More money for sony. Game over. Sony wins. Ah, and the PS3 will not cost $500. The maximum pricepoint is $399 which is also a likely pricepoint for Xbox 2. Remember that the dollar fell quite a bit and might continue to fall well into 2006. Granted. The Xbox 2 will come out before the PS3 but it is economically unfeasible for them to have a BluRay player on board because they need to release the console at $399 or lower. The good news is BluRay should win the format wars. It is clearly superior to HD-DVD so we’ll get better looking movies and a much needed decent storage medium for the PC. ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/43 "2005-01-09T00:23:35Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] [li]No online capability.[/li][li]Smaller discs, necessitating disc-swapping. _On a console._[/li][li]No backwards compatibility, ensuring that releasing a new console kills off sales of the games from the previous console.[/li][/quote] They are indeed online-capable. You must buy an adapter, just like the old clunky PS2s (not the pretty new ones) I don’t really get the big deal about disc-swapping, especially given that I’ve played 2 games on the GC that required a swap. (One of which was the 2nd TMNT game, a ridiculous one to begin with.) Tales of Symphonia was a great game, and I didn’t mind having to switch discs after 15 hours of gameplay. Not with the N64, no (why would you want to? :p), but you can play Gameboy games on it. Not necessarily a Nintendo fanboy, as I have it and a PS2. Just didn’t appreciate the hate. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/44 "2005-01-09T01:11:46Z")
I work for Sony. I am not privy to price information on the PS3. If I was, I woudn’t be posting this. However, I can say with extreme confidence that the PS3 will NOT sell for $500. That would be retail suicide. Sony’s not stupid. My best guess is $300. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/45 "2005-01-09T01:58:32Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Well, Nintendo had to have been doing _something_ right to have had such a great run with NES and SNES . What, all-of-a-sudden are they doing wrong? None of the NES and SNES competitors were any hot shakes, but if you go back and look at the games, NES customers had a huge selection, and the system was sold on the back of Super Mario Bros., the best side-scroller game ever devised. That’s not true anymore. GC has some good games, but fewer really good ones than its competitors and none with the reputation and panache of “Super Mario Bros.,” and as has already been pointed out the machine is technologically inferior to the PS2 and XBox by any useful measure. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/46 "2005-01-09T02:03:46Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > I work for Sony. > > Sony’s not stupid. Can I have a job? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/47 "2005-01-09T06:08:08Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > Can I have a job? I’m the wrong person to ask. I don’t have any managerial responsibilities whatsoever. It’s bliss. It’s taken me years to work my way back down that particular totem pole. (BTW, if you’re serious about wanting to be in the game industry, check the job listings at [Gamasutra](http://www.gamasutra.com/).) ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/48 "2005-01-09T06:14:57Z")
> [@Chastain86](#): > > It was $299 at launch. I know, because I stood outside a Target at 4:00am in the freezing-ass cold to get one. 🙂 > > The Target we were at distributed tickets to the first 42 people in line, ensuring us a chance to buy one. I had people walk up to me and offer me $300 **for the ticket itself.** It was mind-blowing. > > I’m a little sorry now that I didn’t take someone up on the offer, but _que sera_. That’s insane. I enjoy gaming but it’s been, what, five years now since the PS2 was released and I’ve still not bought a system myself. I’ll finally get around to it when the PS3 hits the shelves and the PS2 drops even further in price. Staying a generation behind the current gaming consoles works pretty well for me. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/49 "2005-01-09T06:43:22Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > I’m the wrong person to ask. > > I don’t have any managerial responsibilities whatsoever. It’s bliss. It’s taken me years to work my way back down that particular totem pole. > > (BTW, if you’re serious about wanting to be in the game industry, check the job listings at [Gamasutra](http://www.gamasutra.com/).) No, I just want to work for Sony, or some other company that has intelligent people at the helm. Besides, I don’t think that there’s much call in the gaming industry for machinists. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/50 "2005-01-09T06:53:08Z")
> [@Chastain86](#): > > It seems to me that Nintendo shot itself in the foot by alienating adult gamers with their software releases, even as far back as the Mortal Kombat days. (Remember the bloodless release for the SNES?) > > Sony immediately recognized that Nintendo was targeting the cutesy crowd with their titles, and positioned itself as the game system for the adult gamer. Remember, Sony isn’t stupid – they recognized an “in” and took it with fervor. Of course, these days, you can get just as violent fare on Nintendo’s box as you can with any other system, but I think the stigma still remains. It’s not helped that Nintendo’s systems come in a variety of kid-friendly colors, and their controllers look like something a kid created with a 64-box of crayons. Sony’s boxes, and even Microsoft’s, look utilitarian, sleek and cool. This also says nothing of DVD support, which Nintendo was slow and hesitant to utilize. > > That’s not to say Nintendo’s offerings are crap – they’re not. It’s just that, by and large, most families only own one gaming system. That system needs to appeal to all the users of a particular household, and since the Atari kids have now gone on to have families of their own, it makes more sense to target the adult and child markets. Nintendo has been slow to embrace this concept. Sony were also smart enough to leave the software development to others - theiy didn’t own any titles themselves, like Nintendo with Mario Bros or Sega with Sonic The Hedgehog, so any outside game developers weren’t competing against them: they were also generous with technical support for software houses, whereas Nintendo had a “favoured few” developers like Rare, and were miserly in their support for anyone else. The result was that the Playstation quickly built up a large range of games - a lot of the early games were crap, but they were on the shelves, and the more that were sold, the more that were developed: the quality kept improving, and more consoles were shifted. Pretty soon, they dominated the market. I agree completely about the contrasting appeal of the two systems: the N64 was technically far superior to the 32 bit Playstation, but they didn’t seem to know what to DO with the power except render cutesy 16 bit scrollers {of course, they were hampered by owning the titles, so they HAD to make Mario Bros games} in 3D environments. Software houses programming for the PS went the opposite route, with games that anyone over the age of 12 wouldn’t be embarrased to play - decent sports sims, the Tomb Raider series, the Syphon Filter series, Metal Gear…they established the PS as the gaming system for adults. ---
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/51 "2005-01-09T06:54:34Z")
For the record, it was only Mortal Kombat 1 for SNES that had the blood removed. 2 and 3 remained intact, as have all subsequent MK releases on a Nintendo console. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/52 "2005-01-09T08:31:21Z")
Did anyone else think of NeoGeo when they saw this? Anyway, apparently Sony has already done something similar to this in Japan. They released something called the [PSX](http://liksang.com/news.php?artc=3244). It was released last year in Japan and it sold 100,000 units the first week with a price tag of around [$941](http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4850.cfm). The PSX can record TV and DVDs (it has a dvd recorder and a hard drive), play PS2 games, act as a TV tuner, and give you a blowjob. I would not be surprised if Sony released something like that here, but they would surely have a bare bones version for less than $350. ---
**Author:** ![Vaioman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ecccb3/32.png) [@Vaioman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vaioman)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/53 "2005-01-09T09:43:28Z")
Just wanted to put my 2¢ in on standalone dvd players v using the ps2. I used the ps2 for a good while, up until I heard about people’s lasers going out from stress/overuse. Then I plopped down the whopping $40 to get my ARRGO progressive scan unit, which also plays burned dvds and s/vcds and picture/mp3 cds. Well worth the value, imo, if you want to do any of those. I’ve heard(have not tested) that the sound isn’t as good as it could be on the ps2 as a dvd player as well, but I don’t have a reciever with optical audio, so I guess that could be better than just rca. Regarding $500 for a ps3. I’d pay it, if it had all the features it _should_ have. The built-in hard drive, dvd burner, blu-ray player, TiVo like service are all things I don’t have(in the living room, at least). It would be nice if it had built in wireless controller recievers, similar to the speculated N5. Bluetooth and 802.11g are bound to be in there, and I imagine some connectivity with the PSP. I could go on about the features I’d like to see, but it would be wishfull thinking, so I’ll stop 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/54 "2005-01-09T17:57:07Z")
These rumors about high prices for game consoles swirl around every time a game console is released. The latest was the Sony Playstation Portable. Anyway, when that thing was announced, everyone “knew” it was going to be overpriced. $350 at least. I’ve been hearing those kinds of numbers for a year. Then Sony announces pricing, and it’s $187 US. **Rickjay** said: > [@](#): > > That’s not true anymore. GC has some good games, but fewer really good ones than its competitors and none with the reputation and panache of “Super Mario Bros.,” and as has already been pointed out the machine is technologically inferior to the PS2 and XBox by any useful measure. Except the measure that matters the most in a game system: performance. I find it bizarre that game system owners tend to discount this, while PC owners are willing to pay $600 for a new graphics card just to bump their framerates a bit or play in a slightly higher resolution. The Sony machine has the worst graphics of the three major manufacturers, and the slowest processor. The PS2’s polygon fill rate is far worse than the gamecube and Xbox. That means identical games may have to have less detail on the PS2 to be played properly. The gamecube also has much more memory, which allows for better graphics. For example, LucasArts “Bounty Hunter” has 24 bit textures on the GC, vs 8 bit for the PS2. The GameCube also has hardware shadow rendering and a faster processor. In the PC world, which is only partially about gaming performance, we’d see these differences as being critical. So how come in the gaming world, where this stuff should really matter, people are willing to shrug it off as irrelevant? GC also has another big advantage: Price. I just bought one for my daughter for Christmas. I got a Gamecube bundled with Metroid Prime for $119 CDN. The PS2 was $169 bare. Throwing in a game pretty much doubled its price over the GameCube. So given all this, I think that the real answer for why Nintendo isn’t doing so well simply comes down to software. I’ve already run into the limitations of that - I see all these cool new games, and most of them don’t work with the GameCube. My daughter loves Final Fantasy, but the only Final Fantasy game available is Crystal Chronicles. BTW, for multi-player role playing games, the GameCube has a very cool feature: you can use Gameboy Advances as your game controller, and if you do, all your character’s information and stats appear on the Gameboy screen, leaving the main screen uncluttered for everyone to follow the action. The same concept can be extended to other competitive games, where each player can see their own private information like ammo left, damage, etc. It also greatly increases the overall amount of screen real-estate available to the game. Even in a single player game you could use the Gameboy to display, say, a radar screen while the action remains on the main screen. ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/55 "2005-01-09T17:59:11Z")
> [@interface2x](#): > > I do. I have a real dvd player, too, but that’s in the bedroom and I don’t yet feel it necessary to spend $50 to get something for my living room that will only do what my PS2 can do for free at this point. I do too. Why pay anything for something you don’t need? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/56 "2005-01-09T20:21:33Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > So given all this, I think that the real answer for why Nintendo isn’t doing so well simply comes down to software. I agree, though I only have myself as a sample group. I didn’t purchase a Gamecube because I felt burned by my ownership of the N64. A handful of good games did not compare to the number of good games available on the PSone. I didn’t purchase a Dreamcast in part because I was burned by my SegaCD which had very few decent games. I almost bought a SegaSaturn and would have been screwed any further. I also avoided purchasing a Dreamcast because I knew Sony and Nintendo were both going to come out with new systems. I didn’t purchase an X-Box because I wasn’t sure what kind of games they’d have. So far about the only games X-Box has had that I really wanted to play was Halo and KOTOR. I purchased a PS2 because of the vast library of quality games to be found on the PSone. I figured the PS2 would have just as impressive a library. I look forward to the next console war but for now I’m likely to stick with Sony. Marc ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/57 "2005-01-10T05:03:54Z")
> [@](#): > > I do too. Why pay anything for something you don’t need? Who suggested “need”? It’s all about WANT. You don’t need a PS2, either. A standalone DVD player can have more functionality than a PS2 alone. Throw in the fact that playing DVD’s wears out the internal gears far faster than playing games and you have a good enough reason for someone to want a separate system. Me, I always played DVD’s on my PC, so it was always a moot point. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/58 "2005-01-10T07:12:29Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Except the measure that matters the most in a game system: performance. I find it bizarre that game system owners tend to discount this, while PC owners are willing to pay $600 for a new graphics card just to bump their framerates a bit or play in a slightly higher resolution. Actually, paying $600 for a few more fps is what’s bizarre. (And I say this as someone who bought a whole new PC just to play _Half-Life 2_.) Performance is the most important consideration for _hard-core_ gamers. Consoles primarily target _casual_ gamers, who don’t give a shit about polygon-counts or draw distances. If performance is your number one concern in your video game experience, you aren’t wasting your time on consoles in the first place. That’s what the PC market is there for. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/59 "2005-01-10T10:32:41Z")
There’s a huge difference between PC and console gaming, no doubt about. PC gaming is constantly upgrading, making tiny advancements and improvements every couple months. Consoles upgrade at about the same rate, but in huge leaps every 5 years or so instead of tiny increments. So when you first buy a console, you’re on the cutting edge… for about a year. Then you’re just about average, then you’ve got a year or so of mediocrity before the next gen crops up. ---
**Author:** ![Zonyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a183cd/32.png) [@Zonyx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zonyx)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588/60 "2005-01-10T11:33:23Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > :smack: er… NES64 came out in 1996. Why the hell did I think they were the same thing? 96? You’re kidding me. I’m getting old ☹ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playstation-3-to-cost-500/283588.md?page=4)