Blu-Ray cost 'non-existent'

Sony's Phil Harrison has stated that the decision to include Blu-ray functionality in PlayStation 3 has not burdened the console with 'unnecessary cost' - but there are still no plans to cut the price of the console in PAL territories.

In an interview with US magazine GamePro, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios goes on to say that the cost of including the technology is 'non-existent', and that it is essential to the development of next-gen software.

"There's this sort of misunderstanding that the Blu-ray disc player for movies is somehow burdening the console with unnecessary cost," said Harrison.

"That is completely not true. We put our Blu-ray Disc functionality in the console purely from a game design point of view. Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray Disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent."

But while the cost of including Blu-ray is apparently negligible, and even though the price of the console has been slashed for its release in Japan, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe still has no plans to reduce the price of the console in the UK.

"We actually confirmed that the price cut applies to Japan only," confirmed a Sony spokesman. And as for the pricing of the software and launch line-up - "All of those details will be announced closer to launch, and we're not going to be making any further comment until then."