Once Warner Brothers jumped ship, and Paramount started making similar noises, it was almost inevitable that the Next Gen DVD War might be drawing to an end. Too bad that it's gonna be Blu-Ray though - it proves to Sony that if they stamp their feet like an angry child they will eventually get their way.
Oh, well. I'll give it a while before I call this over, but the future looks dim for HD-DVD.
It is worth noting that Bill Gates, in a recent interview, had a good point when he stated that the future will see the end of discs as downloads and portable storage get cheaper, more reliable, and more prevalent.
Is the end near?
On
2008-01-10
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8 comments:
While I agree with that analysis, I still don't think Blu-ray is going to catch on. It will be more successful than HDDVD, however the HD tv set penetration is just not high enough to warrant the new formats yet. They are still niche products for the technological obsessive.
That said, At my house, we have both HDDVD and Bluray support now, and we notice a huge difference, as our most used display device is a 120" 1080p display. At those sizes, you can reasonably easily see the difference between DVD quality and HDDVD/Bluray content. For anything less than probally the 40" range, I don't think it's worth the cost, yet anyway.
Mircosoft has come out and stated that it is possible to make a bluray attachment for the Xbox360, so if bluray dies, I will still be able to add to my xbox for hd content. Add on the Xbox is now supported as a cable box replacement to pick up cable channels in Britian, and starting similar services in the States, I'm still pretty happy with that purchase.
The Playstation3 is nice too, don't get me wrong. I just feel like it still needs a year or two to work out some of the bugs.
...proves to Sony that if they stamp their feet like an angry child they will eventually get their way.
I assume you don't mean that Sony has the lacks the same right to negotiate licensing & exclusivity agreements enjoyed and exercised by
* Universal & "the HD DVD group"
* EA and the NFL
* Coca-Cola & the U of S
* Sirius Satellite Radio & Ford
* Gail Simone and DC Comics
* Toys "R" Us & Amazon
And I assume that you don't mean that this 'foot stamping' caused consumers (including several Gnoschitters) to buy and enjoy PS3's and movies to watch on them.
So, what do you mean?
Wow, that's a fair bit of assumption.
What I meant was that Sony was one the main instigators (not the only one) at the beginning of the next-gen DVD war to refuse to budge on choosing a universal format, forcing the 2 format dilemma previously seen in the VHS/Beta debacle (and Beta was the superior format, so Sony got screwed on that one).
I also meant that the only real victim to all this crap is the consumer who is forced to take a risk choosing one format, spend lots of cash buying both, or wait. I personally don't care if you have a PS3 or HD-DVD player, but hope that your chosen format doesn't go the way of Beta, leaving you with a small collection of movies that won't play on anything new.
But, that's my personal opinion, and as someone who worked for Sony for a short time I may have a slightly different view than some of you.
At the end of all this I just want format war to end so I can start buying one format of movies to watch on my plasma.
RE: Digital Downloads
Exactly how is this amazing new era of massive hi-def digital downloads going to work for me on my shitty slow connection? Hint: it won't. There will always be removable media, and as soon as we settle on one we can all move on.
RE: Format War
It couldn't last forever, and I think that we can all agree that Sony's approach (and it's hench-corps) wasn't any different than Toshiba's (and it's hench-corps).
The technical differences aren't really that huge (I know there's plenty of argument otherwise), it was just two big companies trying to show that they can prevail. Sony had some experience losing these sorts of battles, Toshiba didn't. Advantage - Sony.
But I've heard that MS is already on the ball with planning a BD drive for the 360, so we'll soon see games that use all of the available 50+ GB of storage on a BD disc - which is great news (for 360 owners IMHO).
Just my thoughts on it.
I brought out these examples to show that this sort of behaviour is ubiquitous - but Sony is repeatedly singled out for abuse. Toshiba and HD haven't been repeatedly slagged on Gnoschitt, certainly. Nobody will say that Gail Simone is hurting consumers because she will only write for DC, leaving Marvel readers out in the cold.
And alas for the poor Pepsi drinker who enrolled at the U of S in 1997 and found himself on a Coca-Cola campus the very next year.
Is what you meant is that you think that producers have a responsibility to minimize consumer costs and risks (calling consumers 'victims' suggest so)? It seems to me that corporations' responsibilities don't go much further than their shareholders, a responsibility they satisfy by transferring every possible risk and expense to consumers.
On a lighter note, since everyone needs a PS3 to game on ;) it seems like you can't lose - you automatically have a Blu-Ray player and if you need HD DVD capacity, you buy a player, covering all your bases.
Fair enough to all points!
Unfortunately I have a 360, so I was kinda routing for a HD-DVD.
Regarding corporations if you haven't seen a documentary called "The Corporation" I highly reccommend it you. Simple premise: Corporations often work under the same laws that individuals do, yet if an individual were to perform many of the acts that the Corporations do the individual would be declared insane and locked up. Thought provoking (and long) at the very least.
Happy gaming!
MS publicly acknowledged there would never be any HD-DVD games *EVER*, so this isn't really a setback for you, unless you have a HD-DVD drive already and were hoping they would reverse that position.
Now that two platforms have the same high density optical format, there stands a much better chance of seeing them use it.
can't we just go back to Laserdisc? ;)
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