PS3 Launch Price

[Blaze Lord]

(At least in Europe)
“around €500 [$613], in the range of €499 to 599 [$612 to 734]”

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8801

[bingo83]

At the current rate of exchange that would be around £350. I will be suprised if it launched for any less than £400 over here.

[Blaze Lord]

How much does the 360 run you in pounds?

[Will_90]

well thats a bit over priced. i think i'll wait a long while untill the proces go down

[Raide]

The 360 core is £209 and the Full System works out at £279.

[phatmuther]

if they sell it at that price, the 360 will definatly win the next gen battle (not including the rev maybe) their reasoning is because it plays blu ray, whoop, id say the majority of peepes want it for the games and prob wont fork out that much, their best bet wouldve been to do what microsoft did and do 2 packages, one with blu ray and one without, and just dont put all the games on blu ray

i see them failing

[Steve]

Sadly though its not overpriced if it is 600 USD. Its still a huge bargain when it comes down to it, but the question becomes are you buying the next Playstation consoles for video games or for a disk player? And if you picked video games then who would want to buy a console for 600.

[kazzer]

Personally I can't understand why the blu-ray technology was such a must have part of the playstation 3's design, for games that require large amounts of disk space the easier option would be to offer large storage on the console and allow the user to install the game using however many disks are neccisary (Final Fantasy Online). I understand there a flaws in this, but it seems that the world may not quite be ready for blu-ray much like umd,minidisk and betamax.

[Raide]

To be honest, we are not ready for Blue-ray. The idea is that is can store more so we can watch HD Movies on our TV's and when we play games, it means they have more space to play with. I am not 100% happy with this since DVD has loads of space and having Blue-ray size disc's will mean developers will spend more time filling the disc and development time will be huge. We will be abck to the old several years for a sequel again. Plus Sony are also adding a HDD as well. Why have both is Blue-ray is sufficient storage?

Don't get me wrong, I am all for epic games but Sony seems to be telling people you can watch movies on the Blue-ray..and we do some games too. Nothing I have seen yet really shows me that Blue-ray is needed yet. Once more people have HD-TV's etc then I am sure it will be usefull but many people will head to HD-DVD because they know DVD works.

Time will tell how everything works out but going by UMD's luck at the moment, things could get dodgy.

[backin-strachan]

Yeah for once Steves got it right:p If you are solely buying it for games I would look elsewhere.
PS3 - £400+
XBOX 360 - £279
Plus games etc. Unless a Blu-ray is also in there requirements XBOX 360 might win.

[Blaze Lord]

To be honest, we are not ready for Blue-ray. The idea is that is can store more so we can watch HD Movies on our TV's and when we play games, it means they have more space to play with. I am not 100% happy with this since DVD has loads of space and having Blue-ray size disc's will mean developers will spend more time filling the disc and development time will be huge. We will be abck to the old several years for a sequel again.

Nah, I don't think that's how it will go. Devs won't use up space just because it's there. Look at DVD based games. Some take up only 2 gigs, but they don't hold off development to fill up those other 2.5, yanno?

Plus Sony are also adding a HDD as well. Why have both is Blue-ray is sufficient storage? For downloadable content.

Once more people have HD-TV's etc then I am sure it will be usefull but many people will head to HD-DVD because they know DVD works. HD-DVD and Blu-ray are actually really similar, as far as the end-user experience is concerned.

Time will tell how everything works out but going by UMD's luck at the moment, things could get dodgy. Well, maybe. But UMD really failed (is failing) because it was a comparable price with a DVD, yet you could only play it on your handheld. ONTOH, a very tech-savy person could get a copy of a DVD onto their PSP. Only very recently has Sony made plugging-PSP-into-TV a discussion. (Although, I bet the resolution will just look crappy on a fullsize screen.)

[phatmuther]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Raide
Once more people have HD-TV's etc then I am sure it will be usefull but many people will head to HD-DVD because they know DVD works.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray are actually really similar, as far as the end-user experience is concerned.

i think whats he means is that more people (the average user) would go for a title on HD-DVD simply because they are used to the name, DVD and hence know it works, whereas bluray i just new to them

[Blaze Lord]

Yeah, but it doesn't come down to a title-by-title basis. It comes down to what player you own. The average user in this case is then listening to the guy in the BestBuy vest, and he'll say that 'Yeah, that Blu-Ray player plays old DVDs. So does this HD-DVD one. Yeah they both have discs. Yeah both discs cost more."

[kazzer]

From what I can gather from reading certain sources on the internet the differences between the two are basic and will make little difference on the average consumer, the bigget difference being the size Blu-ray being able to hold up to 50GB whereas HD-DVD only holding 30. The rest are things that in my opinion hold no real threat over the other, though I did read that sony's ever growing empire could restrict certain sale aspect of the HD-DVD technology.

[Mez]

Seems a reasonable price when the first Blu-Ray players are being touted at $999 on release. Though, I was having a discussion with my dad about the blu-ray thing and if Sony decided just to ditch the idea and put in an HD-DVD drive, they'd be able to make the machine cheaper on the market, build it for less and not worry about future incompatibility.

Kazzer, the way Blu Ray is, it could technically hold 8 25 GB layers, in other words 200 GB on the single disc, which is actually thinner but more durable than HD-DVD (supposedly it can't scratch). Obviously the problem here is it's far more expensive than HD-DVD because it's a brand new technology rather than HD-DVD which is an expansion on current.

[JastheaceUK]

I reckon that over it will be around the 350 to 400 quid mark which is still quite expensive.

[JJBDude]

400 pounds is the maximum I will be willing to pay for a Playstation 3, and that's only if the launch games are very good. I would like to get a Playstation 3 but I have a Xbox 360, and it's great! Therefore I will be able to copy without a PS3, and I will do so if it's at a high price.

[Steve]

Sony went back on the Euro Rep's comments say the audience was taking the comments out of context as if that price being compared to other Blu Ray Products would be cheap, not comparing it to other gaming consoles. So the PS3 will have a price similar to gaming consoles. At GDC when all the PS3 hooplah was started again they told some reporters a price range of about 450....$.

[Blaze Lord]

It's wise to take any pre-launch claims with a grain of salt. And when they come from Sony, take the whole shaker.

[tidus04]

I would have to say that the Ps3 will probably come out in the Uk for £350. That is my personal view on it. The games will be around £45-£50 in most gaming shops

[bingo83]

Soon after the Internet had swollen with reports claiming that the vice president of SCEE, Georges Fornay, had revealed the price spot for PlayStation 3, Sony called a timeout and started to rectify what actually was told.

Sony says that the reported price fork from 499 to 599 euros was simply mistranslated or misunderstood. What Fornay meant, according to Sony, was that the value of Blu-ray drive would be somewhere around 500 euros. "He summarised by saying that PS3 would be expensive when one looked at the current price of a video games machine, at far below 500 Euros, but extremely good value when looking at the BD and HD technology inside," corrected Nick Sharples from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

The quick and rather strict commenting on the price reports still doesn't shed much light to PS3 price speculations, as it could go both ways from here. Now we are looking at a price spread between 200 and 800 euros. Maybe E3 will finally clarify this.

Original Article (http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15937)

I think we should have a sweepstake on the Official Price announced at E3 :)

[BluMind]

So basically..a PS3 console is going to cost 400 quid, but that's just the console..and the games are gonna be expensive with the blu ray technology, so in order to play PS3 for xmas, it's gonna nearly cost you 450 to 470 quid. OH AND THAT'S WITHOUT GOING LIVE!..unless PS3 is making the service free.

[Blaze Lord]

According to the Unofficial PS Magazine.. "PlayStation 3 is expected to sell for about $399 in the U.S., €322 in Europe and ¥45,965 in Japan... The console will launch in the first half of November with the PlayStation Network Platform service launching simultaneously with the console and offering free online gameplay..." From http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/10795/New-PlayStation-3-Details-Emerge/ of all places.