Audio Video News

Sony finally admitted the inevitable this week, announcing that the Blu-ray Disc-based PlayStation3 will be delayed until November. According to Sony, the much-anticipated game console will be available in stores worldwide in November just in time for the holiday season. The console will apparently not be available concurrent with the launch of movies available on Blu-ray Disc, which are currently scheduled for release May 23rd.

In spite of intensifying reports of the PS3's delay in recent weeks, Sony had yet to officially move from its "Spring 2006" launch position. Numerous reports are citing Sony's inability to implement Blu-ray Disc's robust copy restriction schemes as the driving force behind the delay. There's an irony in this, given that it’s a feature that holds no benefit to consumers whatsoever.

While it's been frequently reported that PS3 will give Sony a big shot in the arm financially, it's also been reported that Sony is going to have to eat money (maybe a lot of money) on every unit sold in order to hold the price of the console down to a level that a massive number of consumers can afford as an impulse buy. Sony has previously said it will subsidize the PS3 in order to establish Blu-ray as the next-gen format in order to sell the consoles at $300-$400; recent reports have the actual manufacturing price of the consoles as high as $900 each.

The PS3's delay is significant with respect to Sony's efforts to establish Blu-ray as the next-generation optical disc format. PS3 is based on a Blu-ray disc drive, making it fully capable of playing high-definition BD movie discs. With a spring launch and a sub-$400 price tag Sony believed it could sell as many as 20 million consoles in the US in 2006 alone, establishing a sizable beachhead of BD players in the format war against HD DVD. No BD player yet announced will cost less than $1000. Toshiba will have a $500 HD DVD player available at launch, and indeed a big part of the HD DVD marketing campaign centers on the minimized financial risk to the consumer compared to Blu-ray, which won't even be in stores when HD DVD launches later this month (provided that software is available of course!)

While you'd think that the HD DVD crowd would be dancing a jig at this news, Sony's bad news comes on the heels of a Hollywood Reporter story citing sources at Warner as doubting that the company can provide the software titles that were scheduled to accompany the format's March 28thlaunch. The story cited "technical problems," as the reason for the delay, which was referred to as being a "week or two" in duration.

This isn't the first time that players on either side have made bold promises that could not be kept. And one wonders, with the delays, fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding the format war whether consumers might just be happier with the HD Video-On-Demand services more and more cable companies are offering, or one of the other "disc-less" media services that are cropping up in greater numbers all the time.