Word from the Sony camp emerged today about the pricing for its next-generation medium Blu-Ray, and the movies which will be made on it. Catalog titles, Sony announced, will sell for $17.95, which is approximately the price in which DVD's were sold at upon being released on the market several years back.

Also something to be noted is the fact that newly released movies which come straight from theaters will be sold at a premium price of $23.45. Benjamin Feingold, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment explained. "The higher pricing structure for new releases is meant to accommodate the sell-through and rental markets." It is interesting to see this highly competitive pricing strategy by Sony and it seems like they will price themselves to directly compete with DVD and HD-DVD upon its release and rollout in the coming months. Another interesting thing will be to take note of the pricing announcement for HD-DVD, which should be coming soon.

Another thing which Sony is going to begin to rollout is that of the DVD/UMD bundle, which will eventually turn into the Blu-Ray/UMD bundle. Sony plans to charge about $28.95 for combos such as The Grudge, Resident Evil, Underworld, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Terminator. This is a great price considering a regular UMD would normally be sold for around $25 on its own. These will be released on March 28th. "A lot of people have DVD players and also have PSPs, and this way for one price they can get one movie and play it back on both formats," Feingold said explaining the move.

In terms of Blue-Ray integration Feingold said, "With the launch of Blu-ray, we're going to try to introduce the managed-copy concept, where if you buy Blu-ray you'll be able to get additional versions (of the same title) to use in your home." We'll have more news as it is released pertaining to the launch of Blu-Ray as well as its impact on the PlayStation 3 launch upcoming.

For more news, check out our Xbox 360 site or our Nintendo DS site.