HD DVD and Blu-ray Drives Cost Over $400 to Build

[Damion Chaplin]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060406-6544.html' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060406-6544.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Research firm In-Stat has released a report that looks at the potential market for the two battling next-generation optical formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. The report starts off by analyzing a bill of materials for "blue laser players" and came up with a round figure of about US$400. This includes not only the hardware, but royalty licenses for the various codecs included in the players."</i><br /><br />Obviously, this price will come down over time as market demand grows and more factories move over to blue-laser manufacturing, but I shudder to think what this means for the introductory price of the PS3...

[Philip Colmer]

I suspect Sony will sell it at a loss. They can't afford the price to be too much more than the XBox 360 otherwise it doesn't matter how much better they claim it to be, no-one will buy it (except the die-hards).

Speaking of expensive, though, have you seen how much the report from In-Stat costs 8O!

--Philip

[rzanology]

this means sony drops the ball....again. Microsoft isnt playing any more...they're out to take over.