Sony juggles lasers

Thursday 31 August 2006
Sony's attempts to storm the high-definition disc market with its Blu-ray format have seemingly hit a snag: its manufacturers can't produce enough blue lasers to support both stand-alone Blu-ray players and PS3 for the Christmas season. In response, the company is putting all its technological eggs into the PlayStation basket - shifting priorities so that the majority of Blu-ray lasers are assigned to PS3s, not players.

It's not the first time Blu-ray has caused trouble for the new console - according to Sony's company line, at least - with this year's delayed launch blamed on problems with the format. But this latest development seems to point towards a win for gamers.

Sony is obviously willing to take a loss on players in order to produce as many consoles as possible which, though PS3 isn't exactly pocket change, retail for considerably cheaper than a stand-alone player.

And if you're not particularly bothered about hi-def movies yet, the news that there's likely to be more than 10 PS3s available (and when we say 'available', we mean 'being hawked on eBay') across Europe at launch can only be a good thing.