The BDP-S300 will go on sale for $499, a full $100 less than first expected.
It isn’t often that products show up to market with prices lower than originally announced, but that’s exactly what will be happening with Sony’s BDP-S300 Blu-ray player. The second-gen Blu-ray player was supposed to cost $599 when it was first announced in February, but Sony announced Monday that it was shaving $100 off that price to offer the BDP-S300 for $499.
Sony’s first Blu-ray player, the BDP-S1, went for a cool $1,000 when it came out just sixth months ago. The company says that the rapid 50 percent price drop is due to growing consumer demand and falling production costs. The rival HD-DVD format may also have something to do with it: Toshiba’s HD-A2 player can be had for $250.
The Playstation 3, which sells for as little as $499 and can play Blu-ray discs, is still responsible for most Blu-ray sales. That could change with the impending price war and rumors that companies like LG and Samsung working on dual-format players. The slow adoption of both formats is blamed on consumer hesitance to commit to a format that might not be sticking around.
The BDP-S300 should be showing up on store shelves sometime in June.
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RSSIf it were not for concerns over competition we all would be paying through the nose for High Definition.
The one thing I think both companies have missed is the consumers for HD and Blu are very different. HD seems to have more families that buy the expensive boxed sets and Blu seems to have an extension of the gamer market. Both have tapped two distinct markets, one that do not depend on each other for survival. However unlikely it is possible that both formats can and will exist side by side for quite some time.