Well, it seems like not too far into the future (for PS3 vs. X360, it's already born), we will soon see more and more games and movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. With that in mind, what would the difference in costs be to develop something on the next-gen media? I mean, it's obvious that one would cost more than the other, due to the larger capacity, but even so, is the difference in development/mass production costs going to really be that significant?
Next-gen HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, development costs?
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Next-gen HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, development costs? prolly not.
Kind of hard to predict, but consider the following:
compare the price of a CD-R with a DVD-R, both have been out for years now. If you look around, you can find name-brand DVD-R's probably for about $0.50/each, and name-brand CD-R's for $0.15 or so.
dual-layer DVD-R's are still $2-$3 each.
Two big issues:
- Technology. the high-density formats are technically more difficult to create, and especially more difficult to create without flaws. There's also more work involved (e.g. dual layer vs. single layer), making the more advanced forms more expensive to produce.
- Economy of scale. The more demand there is for a certain type of media, the more manufacturers will start creating it. The production equipment gets cheaper since they sell more machines, and there is more competition among media manufactuers driving the price down.
Since it is near impossible at this point to predict what kind of market adoption either bluray or hd-dvd will get, it's also near impossible to product what kind of level the price of the media will end up at. If neither gets any significant adoptance, prices will remain high.
(right now a writable 25GB bluray disc (BD-ROM) is about $15 for a single disc. Equal storage space on DVD-R is around $2.50, making DVD's far more economical than bluray at this time, aside from the fact that pretty much noone (at least no-one in their right mind) has a bluray drive in their PC at the moment.
compare the price of a CD-R with a DVD-R, both have been out for years now. If you look around, you can find name-brand DVD-R's probably for about $0.50/each, and name-brand CD-R's for $0.15 or so.
dual-layer DVD-R's are still $2-$3 each.
Two big issues:
- Technology. the high-density formats are technically more difficult to create, and especially more difficult to create without flaws. There's also more work involved (e.g. dual layer vs. single layer), making the more advanced forms more expensive to produce.
- Economy of scale. The more demand there is for a certain type of media, the more manufacturers will start creating it. The production equipment gets cheaper since they sell more machines, and there is more competition among media manufactuers driving the price down.
Since it is near impossible at this point to predict what kind of market adoption either bluray or hd-dvd will get, it's also near impossible to product what kind of level the price of the media will end up at. If neither gets any significant adoptance, prices will remain high.
(right now a writable 25GB bluray disc (BD-ROM) is about $15 for a single disc. Equal storage space on DVD-R is around $2.50, making DVD's far more economical than bluray at this time, aside from the fact that pretty much noone (at least no-one in their right mind) has a bluray drive in their PC at the moment.
Yeah, but now I understand that some of Toshiba's notebooks seem to have the HD-DVD-ROM, IIRC.
I expect it to take years for these formats to truly take off. especially in Europe. Theres few HD TV channels and normal channels look like shit.
(right now a writable 25GB bluray disc (BD-ROM) is about $15 for a single disc. Equal storage space on DVD-R is around $2.50, making DVD's far more economical than bluray at this time, aside from the fact that pretty much noone (at least no-one in their right mind) has a bluray drive in their PC at the moment.
Well... I have, not one, but two blu-ray drives in my PC. One is Plextor and the other one is Sony and I'd love to use them all the time due to the smaller number of discs for backups of my hard drives. There are only two tiny little things stopping me doing it. Price and price. :) The drives are around $1200 and a single media is around $50. I can purchase quite a few hard discs, bang them into external chasis and have much faster mass storage.
Before someone question my mind about having two blu-ray drives, I work for a computer magazine, so I get to play with the new stuff all the time. It's a pity one has to return them after testing... :(
Barney
we will soon see more and more games and movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs.
Hardly soon. DVD has been out for about 15 years, and many games still ship only on CD's. Given the HD-DVD / Blu-RAy format wars (remember VHS/Betamax) it is going to take even longer for the pragmatic buyer (who may have only just gotten a DVD) to upgrade to either of the new formats any time "soon".This isn't likely to become a proper problem for the next 20 or so years.