The Blu-ray drive transfer speed for the PS3 hasn't been announced AFAIK, although it has to be at least 2x in order to playback movies IIRC (basically, all BR devices must be 2x at least to playback movies I believe). Of course, a 2x BR drive is probably set in stone, but it hasn't been revealed as fact to my knowledge. That said, there are some techniques to using Blu-ray that might make it just as fast (if not faster) than a 12x DVD drive; there is more to loading times that just max theoretical read speeds. I'd like to see you prove that somehow. Again, following that logic, it would take the PS3 (or PSX III) 3 years to match the costs of the 360 when it launched...sounds kind of bogus, especially if you're in the "there isn't that much of a leap between the two" camp. And FWIW, ML originally totaled it as $900 (not over), and then later added that this was an adding error and should have been $800. So even saying "ML expects it to cost $900" is inaccurate, and that is far from saying "The PS3 costs $900 to make." I think I must have missed all of those comments. Have any links? Oh and FWIW, I think it is more like ~7GB for 360 DVDs thanks to the security features. These are some comments from devs that I know of: Mark Rein of Epic Games: http://www.computerandvideogames.co...dvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=125925 Dan Houser of Rockstar http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56025 Deano Calver, Lead Programmer at Ninja Theory http://rattie.demon.co.uk/?p=43 Tomonobu Itagaki of Team Ninja (he's like a Xbox fanboy too ) http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/630/630998p1.html And then both EA and Viviendi Univerasal joined the BDA back when it was getting started: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-15015-1402-4-4-x There's some more quotes I can think of (Ted Price of Insomniac thought Blu-ray was something to look forward to IIRC) and there are probably a lot of other comments, but the vast majority of comments I've seen from developers have been very pro Blu-ray ( or at least, kind of anti-DVD, at least to some small degree). I think 360 devs will deal with it, but I think they prefer a larger medium. OK...so where did you get the idea that Sony wasn't going to provide this online community since everything up to this point has seemed to point to the exact opposite (a much better online service basically, possibly on the level of XBL)? Assuming the following is true, then it seems like they have most of it in place: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2270&Itemid=2 http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2353&Itemid=2 It makes sense that the PS3, a machine that isn't an "order of magnitude" more powerful than the 360 according to John Carmack, will cost 3 times more at launch to make than the 360 cost to make at launch (with a 6-12 month time difference, plus Sony’s expertise in manufacturing hardware)? And it also makes sense that Sony, despite their comments about the importance of an online community, won't try to copy what MS did in order to increase their revenues (while possibly cutting into the revenues for MS)? Hmm...I must be living in bizarro world or something.
Thank you for pointing out my type-o, if you'll refer to my first post in this thread I spelled it right... no need to get all defensive and anal retentive about your beloved PS3. Anyway, your logic here is horrible at best. So you're saying a 2x drive will load faster then a 12x drive? BOTH have "some techniques" to help the games load faster, but outside of using Jedi mind tricks, a 2x isn't going to out-perform a 12x in loading times... and even IF it could load faster the amount data being pushed down couldn't exactly be loaded fast enough because of the system hardware, creating a bottleneck. I'd like you to prove that it won't cost that much to make... the truth is it is ALL speculation. Until Sony decides exactly how and what parts are going into the system and they release those specs to the public, there is no way in knowing. You help make my point for me here however, by them including the Blu-Ray they put themselves in an entirely different price range then the 360, which one way or the other is going to severely hurt their sales figures. Microsoft won't catch up to them on this console, but they are going to put a massive dent in their sales, especially in the US and Europe. The Premium 360 cost(s) over $600 to make, and the PS3 is using newer technologies including Blu-Ray, so saying that $800-$900 actual cost is not too far out there at all. The HD-DVD add-on for 360 could range from $150-$250 bucks alone, putting an HD-DVD 360 at nearly $750 bucks... once again the figures are there. The longer the PS3 waits to launch, the CHEAPER they will be to make... so I don't expect Sony to rush if they don't have to. Once again, Oblivion (easily the longest 360 title to-date and maybe of the year) comes in at a little over 5GB on the disc... that is nearly a 1/3rd of the space to spare. They also have a 20GB hard drive to play with... yet another ingenius idea by Microsoft. By not forcing people to buy the hard drive they give the budget gamer a chance to play and they also give game developers the ability to "hold back" extra content for download at a later date. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are definately the wave of the future and of course Dev's are going to drool over them but they aren't needed for this generation of games. Other then the die-hard Japanese market that loves "cut scenes" the vast majority of the gaming world doesn't need games that take 9GB. Sports games, FPS's, action and driver games... We can offer links and links of people for and against the Blu-Ray inclusion in PS3, but from a business standpoint I don't think it is a good idea. The addition of Blu-Ray, the extra price of Blu-Ray games and the extended development time puts them in a huge holes starting out against the 360. Trust me, I can't wait for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray games, but I'm not going to pay 600 bucks for a system and 75 bucks for a game when I can buy a 50 dollar game and throw it on my PC.
IIRC, there are like 2-3 things that are associated with the time it takes to read/write from a disc, and transfer speed is one of those things. Seek time is another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seek_time AFAIK, I believe BR may end up with better results in this aspect, especially if devs can reduce seek time by building up redundant data on the discs, ala the techniques used in games like God of War and GTA. It is a little complicated (I don't even understand it completely), but I have read that a 2-3x BR drive could compete with a 12x DVD drive in some instances, especially since the DVD transfer speeds can vary while the BR speeds are constant. I guess I could do that, but I'd rather refer to others who have done that already: http://psinext.e-mpire.com/index.ph...68&PHPSESSID=b2ecac39cf88e2d955d71322c09662b3 (article that breaks down the ML report) http://www.ga-forum.com/showpost.php?p=2814200&postcount=102 ( a post that does kind of the same thing). So you'll use the $800-$900 claim from Merrill Lynch for the PSX III but not for the Xbox 360? Just because the PS3 has newer technologies doesn't mean that $800-$900 is more likely (especially if it were to release 6-12 months later). As I've said in previous threads, Cell is apparently getting "great" yields, and the design behind it might allow for similar cost to make compared to Xenon (if not cheaper). Throw in the multiple uses for Cell, and the cost gets driven down even further. RSX, the other cost-leader for the PS3, may end up being "just a G70," which has been in mass production since the middle of last year. As I've said before, I wouldn't be surprised if at the time of launch, Cell and RSX end up costing Sony less to make than what it cost MS to make Xenon and Xenos (despite Cell and RSX being more powerful in general). I do admit that the Blu-ray drive might get pretty expensive, but not as crazy expensive as some of these estimates. Although this kind of gets into what the article I posted earlier mentioned, so I'll just end it here since it has already been explained (and in a better way than I could explain it). Funny, because the developer comments I posted earlier came from developers of games like Unreal Tournament (FPS), Heavenly Sword (Action game), Ninja Gaiden/DOA (Action/Fighting), GTA (sandbox), and possibly sports games since EA is apart of the BDA (although I admit this might be unlikely). Fair enough. I thought this was a "dev" thing though, not a "what you think" thing. I was just a little confused when you said: The only comments I read from devs stated the exact opposite, so I was a bit surprised to hear that. I'd still like links to the dev comments if you have them. Out of curiosity, did you know that the first BR movies will have a MSRP at launch that will be roughly equal to the MSRP for some of the bigger DVD releases ($25-$35 MSRP...so like $20-$25 at stores). Since it appears that movies won't see much of an increase in price, I doubt games will either, especially since the movie studios can raise the price tag of BR movies without too much of a backlash (already seeing backlash for $60 games on DVD). I'm confused by the "extended development time" necessary for BR games. If anything, I think it would cut down on development time since developers won't have to worry about getting their games to fit on a ~7GB disc. In fact, that's something Deano commented on previously: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=699247&postcount=68
