"Sony should remove the Blu-ray drive from the PS3" (new article)

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Paul Sweeting over at Video Business magazine keeps writing new articles suggestioning that Sony should remove the BLU-RAY drive from the PS3 to make it cheaper.
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6450511.html

Quote
“COULD IT be done? The biggest technical obstacle would be that all PS3 games right now are released only on Blu-ray discs, which would make them unplayable on the model that lacked such a drive.
But there’s no reason most current PS3 games need to be on a Blu-ray disc. Most would fit fine on a standard dual-layer DVD, and most third-party developers would be just as happy not to have to pay to replicate their games on Blu-ray.
Sony could always offer an outboard Blu-ray drive as an upgrade—as Microsoft does now with HD DVD and Xbox—when the games become too complex to fit on a DVD.”

The PS3 plays DVD’s already. Ok if there are any PS3 games 8.5GB or lower then Sony could release those games on a standard DVD to play in the PS3 game system as long as the bit rate of the games does not go over the DVD max bit rate of 10Mbit/s. Any PS3 game 8.5GB or lower should be placed on a DVD-ROM disc instead of a BD-ROM to save cost.
There are many games for the PS3 that are over 8.5GB and require a 25GB BD-ROM disc. So if the BLU-RAY drive was removed then the following games could not be played.


List of some PS3 games over 8.5GB that require a BLU-RAY disc

F1 (11.5 GB)
Formula One (8.90 GB)
Genji US (12.2GB)
Motor Storm US (14.48 GB)
Need For Speed Carbon (11.5 GB)

Resistance Fall of Man (17.53 GB)