Blu-ray a player in PlayStation pricing
The battle between Sony and Microsoft in the game console market won't hinge on price, analysts say. Instead, it will likely come back to Blu-ray.
Sony, which unveiled the specs and pricing of its PlayStation 3 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, will charge US$499 and US$599 for the consoles when they arrive in November in the US.
Microsoft charges US$299 and US$399 for its Xbox 360, which debuted last year. It has shipped about 1.6 million and hopes to have delivered around 5.5 million by the end of June.
While it might look like Microsoft has a US$200 advantage in price, the comparison is a lot more complex than it looks.
For example, Microsoft's US$299 machine doesn't include a hard drive. The US$399 Xbox 360, the more popular model, comes with a 20GB hard drive, making it similar in configuration to the US$499 PlayStation 3.
More important, the Sony console comes with a high-definition Blu-ray DVD drive for playing movies. Standalone Blu-ray players are likely to cost close to US$1,000 when they arrive later this year.
"The PlayStation 3 will look very inexpensive (compared) to the Blu-ray player," said Van Baker, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "You're paying US$100 for the privilege of having a Blu-ray player. It is a very aggressively priced movie player."
But that raises another question: Will consumers consider the movie question when buying the consoles?
"It's cheap for a Blu-ray drive and expensive for a game machine," said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Group.
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