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Sony is certainly hoping many people believe that it’s now a good less-risky decision for not only gamers to purchase the Sony Playstation 3 but also home DVD movie watchers who may or may not also be casual gamers. If Blu-Ray has won the new movie format war, or is winning, or likely to either win or permanently share the spotlight then maybe plopping down $550 or so for a Playstation 3 starter bundle that also plays the high-quality next-generation DVD format may be worthwhile since the Blu-Ray players, alone, already cost as much as the Playstation 3 starter bundle, if not more. If one is strongly considering moving to a newer format player then, with much of the recent news, it’s hard to find a reason to not consider a Playstation 3 since you get the player as well as a pretty powerful gaming system.

Warner announced on Jan. 4 that it would release only high-definition Blu-ray movies starting July, ending its support for the rival HD DVD format. Winning Warner’s backing was a coup for the Blu-ray camp, which counts Sony, Samsung Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial (MC), and dozens of other consumer-electronics makers among its members. Warner has the industry’s most extensive offering of movies and consistently churns out blockbusters. With five out of seven major studios now on-board, Blu-ray has the upper hand—perhaps decisively—in the struggle over the next-generation DVD standard.

Nikko Citigroup’s Kota Ezawa estimates the games division will lose $1.4 billion this fiscal year, following last year’s $2.1 billion loss. And while he doesn’t expect the business to be prosperous until late 2009, Ezawa applauds Sony’s efforts to shrink the PS3’s chips and tweak its design. Already such changes have cut the cost per machine to around $400 now, from above $800 just before it went on sale in November, 2006, he says. (The PS3 with an 80-gigabyte hard-disk drive retails in the U.S. or about $499.) “We think the biggest factor here is that simplification has become possible through a reduction in the parts count, leading to a reduction in costs,” Ezawa wrote in a Dec. 27 report.

That, of course, will be good both for Sony as well as the consumer.

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Posted under Gaming, Platform-PS3, Tech News