Microsoft maybe, Sony definitely not. Sony is just now breaking even on PS3 systems and aren't eager to go back to losing $500+ on every console sold like they did for severals years after launch of PS3. Xbox 720 holiday 2013 or 2014. PS4 Holiday 2014 at the earliest.
Because they rely on others to invent their tech. They just repackage it with metrosexual styling and slick ad campaigns. You need an actual functioning R&D department to develop your own console.
I bet microsoft is really going to hate writing those huge licensing checks to Sony and Disney for the Blu-ray drive in the Xbox 720. For Xbox users sakes I hope MS doesn't skimp out and just license the actual drive technology for storage space and not license the movie playback software. It would suck for Xbox720 owners if the Bu Ray drive in their machine but couldn't view the incredible sound and visual quality of blu ray movies because MS got cheap. This was inevitable though becuase America's internet infastructure just isn't good enough to support streaming of increasingly larger and larger game sizes, especially with most ISP strangling our connections with data caps.
Why doesn't gamestop do an article about the cheapest Xbox 360 currently available with a hard drive is $300 at retail and that is before you pay $60 for you first year of Xbox live. So for $360 your first year and $60 a year thereafter and you still don't get blu ray playback a web browser or a host of other features included in a $250 PS3 with a hard drive, arguably best blu ray playback of any device, and free online gaming I would say Microsoft is guitly of some serious price gouging. Also software library which was once the 360 strong point is considerably better on the PS3 now when you realize that almost every game made for the 360 is now made on the PS3 as well and the the PS3 is building an amazing library of exclusive titles and over the past several years is routinely claiming the majority of Game of the year of awards with PS3 exclusives. Why doesn't gamestop do an article on what a compete ripoff a new Xbox360 console is on what is an incredibly cheap system for Microsoft to make at this point. I guarantee the $300 Xbox360 elite which is the only one to contain a hard drive, which the Xbox 360 is useless without one, costs Microsoft considerably less than $50 to produce.
@treepop89 Yes at $600 the PS3 was very expensive at launch, but you can hardly say Sony was milking its customers. It is well known that initially the PS3 was costing Sony well over $1000 to make because of the extremely high end Cell processor and the inclusion of a Blu Ray drive, which by the way virtually all reviewers of high end AV equipment still consider the PS3 the best Blu-ray player money can buy at any price even 5 years after its release because of Sony's forward thinking. Incidentially the $600 launch price of the PS3 was in line with the vastly inferior stand alone blu ray players on the market at the time. When you consider the outstanding Video and Sound quality, the extremely quick disc recognition and launch times for Blu Ray movies and the fact the the PS3 is always the first the Blu ray to fully support all features of Blu Ray revision updates the PS3 is still without equal as a blu ray player. Obviously if blu ray playback isn't important you then the PS3 might not be the best choice for the a potential customer, but for anyone with a HDTV that likes to watch movies Blu ray playback should be very important to you because as far as retail movie releases are concerned DVDs don't have much time left because studios want to do away with them as soon as possible because of their incredibly weak copy protection.
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