Cheaper Blu-ray players coming, says Sony exec

With the crazydeals last week on HD DVD players, you know Blu-ray had to counter. That counter came from pretty high up at a media roundtable last week -- Sony Electronics president Stan Glasgow forecast drop of standalone players to $399 for the holidays, matching the new PS3 price point. That's a step in the right direction, but when asked if prices could drop even further, he went on to say "I don't expect it to go much lower than that." We're not so sure, though. The steep discounts on HD DVD set a bar for how low the red camp is willing to go; we think the blue camp will have to push back with either price cuts or value-add promotions. That's double true for dedicated players that can't do the videogame thing. We won't predict prices, but it's safe to say this holiday season is going to be interesting for both HDM formats and a good time to jump in to HDM for the consumer.