"All in all, this is nothing but good news for everyone."
Not for Toshiba!

"new lasers can read organic dye, allowing current DVD plants to more easily retool for Blu-ray"

won't that create problems with existing blu-ray players then?

$299 PS3 a reality? o_0

Maybe now we'll see laptops with Blu-ray drives, and it would be nice with HD-DVD more or less out of the market.

nice :D i was wondering by laptops only had hd dvd drives and no blu-ray drives :D and yay, that means the new white ps3 for NA will be cheaper no? :D

A $299 PS3 anytime soon would mean that the system's price would be cut in half less than two years after it hit the market. Early adapters must be feeling pretty screwed :\

@equin0x: sure in couple of years.

*fingers crossed for Blue-Ray PSP2's*

I'm crossing my fingers lots these days. Hope I don't get arthritis.

@Sportyboard: Why? We'ld get 2 more years of play out of it!

@comradestalin: blueray minidiscs! imagine?

@Snappywave: Not to hard to believe. The PS3 originally cost about 800 to make and now they have supposedly brought down the production costs to 400. With SONY moving to smaller chips and stuff like these cheaper blu ray drives, the costs to make the PS3's will just go down.

They were willing to lose 200 dollars each PS3, and if they want to compete, they might as well keep cutting the price as long as they cut costs to go with it.

Awesome. Now will you please stop trying to charge me $400 for a Blu-ray drive?

So how big were the drives before? I know Sony's been offering laptops with Blu-ray BURNERS for a while now...

Aah this is such refreshing news. Good news.

@Sportyboard:

I paid $500 for my 60GB and don't feel screwed at all. I enjoy knowing more people are playing the great games on the system and watching blu-ray movies. I've used my PS3 for countless hours either gaming or watching movies so I have def gotten my $500 out of it already.

@Sportyboard:

I'm an early adopter and I'm fine with the price going down. I also have a 60 GB, so I'm happy. Every one knows the price will be lower if you wait. More PS3 sold can only be a good thing for PS3 owners. Though I don't believe it's going to happen this month anyway.

@Sportyboard:
Early adopters will feel screwed but what are they going to do? Price dropping on hardware is part of the business and we all know Sony needed it.

@stan ls: SHUT UP! DON'T GIVE EM ANY IDEAS! xD

@Kyle81: It's a bad business move to factor any price cuts for 2008. Sony has a lot of things on their horizon and the Blu-Ray format is only part of it. I bet that Sony will do nothing this year and around Q3 2008 they might make announcement for what they will offer in 2009, depending on how well the PS3 has sold. If they sell well Sony will offer Slim and innovative PS3s, if not you can expect them to offer more damatic price cuts to make them more reasonable.

$400 PS3 w/ BC PLZ!

I paid $350 for my 60gb six months ago because I signed up for Sony's interest free credit card.

@NeoAkira: Just buy a used 20gb, they're on eBay for about $325.

@jaworsky: Exactly ... you can't change technology in the middle. If they start pressing Blu-ray discs my PS3 can't read, you can bet I'll be pissed. That's the dirty little secret of Blu-ray, the technology is still incomplete. There is no promise that your Blu-ray player today will work with the discs tomorrow. Very scary.

as soon as that $299 price drop happens, i'm heading straight to gamestop.

@Sportyboard: Wait, didn't early adopters get extra features on their PS3 like, they can play PS2 games? As far as I can see, it's a win/win situation for Early Adopters who got all that extra good and newcomers who just want the system and pay less.

I'm an early adopter as well,and i paid the launch price. However i'm just happy about all the great news fo sony lately. The smaller lasers will in time allows cheaper ps3's which means more systems sold. That in turn means more developers, better games and better online experiances (debatable. But, it really does seem like 2008 will be the year of the ps3, and even possibly 2009 at the rate things are going.

@Sportyboard: People who paid over $600 for a HD DVD player feel screwed. Buying a HD DVD player period.

@Sportyboard: Nope, being an early adopter generally means you're going to pay more. I bought one of the first ps3's off the truck (which was three weeks after the official launch *grumble*), and I knew the price would go down. But I didn't feel like waiting until then. Early adopters who also bitch about the fact that the price goes down later probably aren't very happy people to begin with.

@Sportyboard: I payed full price on the UK launch (60GB). I feel quite nice: I get to play PS3 games; I get to play PS2 games; Sony were kind enough to send me Casino Royale on Blu-Ray for free and I got first dibs on PSN names.

@Sportyboard: sorta... but this 'early adopter' may consider getting a second unit (for another room for my younger sibling) at this price.

@Dp. ]PSN: Fallible[: Yeah the full BC made being an early adopter pretty sweet this time around. I'm currently playing a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics from the original PS. I also have it on the PSP but it's not the same on the little screen.

Not good news for the secret agent on the receiving end of sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads! But everyone else, yeah I guess so.

Ye-owch, I'm getting pretty lambasted.

From my perspective, if I had spent a lot of money on a launch PS3, I would be feeling pretty cruddy right now, I would have just assumed that there would be other who would feel the same way. I guess it's because the "extra" features the PS3 has (Blu-ray player, PS2 BC) aren't really huge selling points for me, namely because I don't watch many movies and don't mind leaving my PS2 hooked up.

It's not that I'm saying early adopters didn't know the price would go down eventually (I'm sure they all did), but having the price cut in half in less than two years is unprecendeted for any successful game system in recent memory (not saying the PS3 is a flop, BTW)

@notalkjustrock:
poor toshiba :( I like toshiba, they should just change to bluray

when do early adopters NOT feel screwed?

seriously, it comes with the territory.

@Kyle81: interesting. so if this were true, they're actually no longer losing so much per console sold? would you happen to have a link for this? just curious, i like keeping track of that sorta thing

Ps3 Slim confirmed? Price Drop?

It's the burning question[s] that SCE will have to tell us right?

I am glad I held out. A possible white PS3 with price slash?.

Tis a good year to finally get me PS triple.

I can't wait for affordable blu-ray burners. i want to back up all my HDD's on discs but that's a heck of a lot of DVDs, blu-ray discs will help.

@jayntampa: Actually Blu-ray players after that were made after September last year have the ability to be updated so there is a high chance that any updates made to the format will work on older players.

@mast3r_blast3r: exactly. i can name some instances right off the bat: first gen DS, first gen PS2, 360... i knew i wouldn't mind as these were the risks i was willing to take. i just wanted the hardware and if there was a reason to justify purchasing a later generation of a gaming platform, i'd sell my current one and get a new one. i know others may not have the $ to throw around for these types of sacrifices, so i suggest waiting a bit (a year or two) before the platform you're interested in matures

@Sportyboard:
PS2 did exactly that, at least in europe:

€500 (November 23, 2000)
€299 (September 28, 2001)
€199 (June 2003)
€149 (August 2004)
€129,99 (August 23, 2006)

@Sportyboard: Nah, it's cool, and I certainly didn't want to make you feel like I was attacking back. I'm please with my purchase, and I'm sure that as the price drops, a lot more people will be pleased when they finally buy one.

Just one note... even if this new laser can read organic dye it's not really going to affect much at all because all the existing lasers can't.

Well considering I only had to buy one PS3 for local and import PS3 games, and since I was able to acquire a 60GB model allowing me to sell my old 300001 PS2 with network adapter, I feel like I got a good deal on mine.

I'm curious if Sony's production costs will reach the point where they can start adding stuff in for a cheap affordable price. Such as a high capacity hard drive and reinclusion of the Cell for PS2 backwards compatibility.
Perhaps also bundling in the Eye and a wireless headset.

@notalkjustrock: Except, it is good news for Toshiba since they had a hand in the Cell processor.

@Milihpen: You mean the EE/GSX, not the Cell.

Higher capacity HDD is more a matter of the HDD price comming down. Since you can swap that part out for whatever HDD you want, i'm not sure why they would ever increase the size of it.

Getting BC back at this point is probabaly going to be up to them writing a really, REALLY good emulator for the Cell/RSX.

@Heyyou27: There are reasonably priced VAIOs with BluRay drives already on the market, not only high-end ones.

Good news everyone (Prof. Farnsworth's voice)

@mrantimatter:
"Getting BC back at this point is probabaly going to be up to them writing a really, REALLY good emulator for the Cell/RSX."

either them... or someone else *cough*

@Kyle81: @kw4k: nvm, i'm an idiot. mark linked it in his article

@infi: a third party doing it would never fly well. Would be cool, but it's not very likely.

Great title for this article. I continue to laugh.