Not just the disc drive (Gaming)

by MacAddictXIV , Seattle WA, Thursday, September 17, 2020, 08:37 (1322 days ago) @ ZackDark

I think it's a combination of two things:

1. I've heard that Blue ray has legal stuff you have to pay for outside of the hardware, like a licensing fee.

But it's Sony's own licensing, no? It's not like they're paying someone else.

Now I had to look it up... According to a quick google, they own a portion of blue ray.
They are one of 8 of the founders and one of 20 on the board (as of 2016). I don't know if they get still pay the other 6/7 (or 19/20) of the fees to license or not, but as of 2016 the fees were $9.50 for a Blu-ray player, and $14 for a Blu-ray recorder. I doubt the PS5 has a blue ray recorder, so it's really not that much for licensing. But it would account for some of the cost.

2. Just because the disc drive is the only thing they are removing doesn't mean they aren't marking the digital PS5 down just to compete with Xbox.

I 100% think it's almost all of it this. The timing between both showcases suggests, to me, they took this time scrambling to make up for the $300 Series S, probably reprojecting gains and losses with new mark downs.

Yeah, this is where my money is on this but I thought I would bring up other possible money costs