I certainly wouldn't bet against that idea. After all, there's no other reason why the console is so expensive.

Well Sony clearly have an 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' attitude to this idea. It worked with PS2 so they do it again with PS3. So far its working in their favour because many people are suckers like that (each to their own mind), but the field of play in the industry has changed now.

Because of Wii and 360, Sony could still end up last in the console stakes, but first in the Blu Ray/HD-DVD war. The question begs which are they more concerned about, games or dvds? Is forsaking one business to help fund another really wise? Now we know what all the media hub spiel was about.

It's Sony, trying to convince the Trojans that their Greeks have gone home, when the sacking of Troy is on the horizon. I have to say I believe more in MS vision now, because MS wants games as 360s main focus with HD-DVD as an extra add on option. That's the way it should be. This is still a games industry after all.

I'm really getting tired of this "look how bad Sony is, infiltrating the industry with its evil blu rays". Take a rain check people, yes, Sony know that their "cheep blu ray players" will boost sales. But please, I think everyone is forgetting a major factor, 54gb of storage space is a very good benefit to have as a gamer. What? You don't want a blu ray drive in your PS3 I hear you cry? Don't be so naive.

As one of the heads of insomniac games quite clearly pointed out in a recent press release, 54gb of space is pretty necessary. How long did it take you to complete gears of war? 6 Hours? Maybe 8? What about The fact is that Gears of War filled up the entire DVD with information, it’s not that the developers didn't want to add more, they couldn't. The DVD player in the Xbox is no different from that in the PS2 and even those disks got filled up. To get good graphics and a good length game, on today’s generation of console's you need blu ray. I love gears of war and my Xbox for that matter. But I'm getting sick of Xbox whores and people saying that the only reason why the PS3 has blu ray is to get their foot in the HD media market, because it is also a huge benefit to gamers.

And before people say... “look at oblivion, that is huge!” This argument is about games with graphics as good as gears... i.e. use streaming textures and therefore get the best graphical results with the highest res textures, therefore taking the most disk space. Sorry to break it to you guys... but Halo 3, is going to be a pretty short ride because of DVD's limitations…

2x Blu-Ray in PS3
9 MB/s

12x DVD in 360
15.9 MB/s

You where saying something about streaming textures?
so... for 200 less i get a faster drive that is better for games. And worse case scenario I just have to swap discs at some point... "OH NOES!"

Never had to do that on PS2.... er... wait.

Please. This isn't a secret. Blu-ray is not better for games. It's got a lot of space, but its still probably cheaper to manufacture 4 DVD's than it is to make 1 BD. And of course sony is passing the savings on to you ;)

And for fun, 1x HD-DVD:
36Mb/s

Yup, Sony's looking out for ya.

Also, as regards to the "infiltrating" last I checked most people who rag on MS as a company do so because of their shady business practices, like, oh I dunno, making an operating system with a built in web browser so other web browser makers couldn't compete. Pesky Trojan horse stuff.

and for the sake of being "fair and balanced" I liek that sony allows you to put whatever size drive in the thing you want. I can get 120gig laptop drive for way less than 180 MS!
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Pay attention to your units! The HD-DVD speed you show is in Megabits per second, the others are in Megabytes per second. That 36Mb/s is actually 4.5MB/s.

And that speed issue is why the 360 won't have an HD-DVD drive as standard anytime soon, games written to stream textures at 15.9 MB/s will barf if the drive only provides them at 4.5MB/s or even 9MB/s if they get a 2X HD-DVD drive.