Playstation 3 price cut could boost Blu-ray sales

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Hollywood’s hopes that high-definition Blu-ray discs could help make up for the sagging market for standard DVDs got a boost today thanks to a long awaited price cut of Sony’s Playstation 3 video game console, which also plays Blu-ray movies.

The PS3 is far and away the most popular Blu-ray player in the world, with 24 million units sold thus far.

However, many studios had been counting on the console being even more popular and serving as a ‘Trojan horse’ to get Blu-ray into many consumers’ homes. While the Playstation 2 was the dominant video game console of the last generation of devices, the PS3 is a distant third behind Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has sold more than 30 million units, and Nintendo’s Wii, which has moved more than 50 million.

One of the main reasons has been the PS3’s high price: It launched at a $599 and for the last two years has been $399, compared with $299 for the Xbox 360 and $249 for the Wii. With today’s price cut, it’s now $299.

Blu-ray movie and TV sales rose 91% in the first half of the year to $407 million in the U.S., according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry trade organization. However, that’s still a tiny percentage of overall consumer spending of $9.73 billion on home entertainment in the same time period and it did little to alleviate an overall drop of 13.5% on disc purchases.

For more on the Playstation 3 price cut, check out the Times’ technology blog.

--Ben Fritz