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In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the strange-sense-of-deja-vu dept.

QuatermassX writes "In a lengthy piece in today's New York Times, Ken Belson equates Sony's troubles in bringing Blu-Ray to market with their classic fumble of Betamax technology in the early 1980's. He also discusses the influence of Microsoft in the recent advances in the adoption of the perceived underdog in this fight, HD-DVD. The article also summarises the various twists and turns in the development of the format along with some scary numbers (that we're familiar with) on the estimated cost of Playstation 3 From TFA: "There are other industry analysts who contend that Microsoft is simply propping up Toshiba to further its own aims, like countering the PlayStation and combating the spread of Sun's Java software. Nonetheless, Toshiba is happy for the backing, given that the format was written off for dead just a few months ago. '"There's no doubt that everyone has various agendas," said Mark Knox, an adviser to the Toshiba promotion group. "But whatever their agenda, Microsoft's support has been a huge boon to HD-DVD.'""

3 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Big yawn w/o smaller disks by transami · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where are the 3.5" optical disks? The last time sony was successful was way back when they introduced 3.5" floppies. Since then they've had one flop after another. You'd think people would actually learn from experience. 3.5" disks would put some physical incentive behind a format. As it is I suspect most people, like myself, are yawning over these new formats. Am I supposed to be excited about having to buy a $2000 tv and a $500 hd/bd player for a few extra pixels of movies I already have? Please. Adoption rates are going to be dismal.

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    :T:R:A:N:S:
  2. The Formt war that never was by thedletterman · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I mean seriously, with over half a billion households around the world sporting a Playstation 2 or Xbox or both, it's really no doubt in my mind that this format war will wage itself in the multibillion dollar gaming industry. Here's were Microsoft has seriously made the fatal mistake that already lost the war.

    While PS3 will natively support BlueRay (Meaning the games can store upto 50GB of high resolution textures and map data, etc.), the Xbox 360 will not support HDDVD games. This ended the war in my mind. Who the hell is going to spend several hundred dollars for a cumbersome ADDON HD-DVD player for their xbox 360, JUST to watch movies?

    Thinking they could overtake a large chunk of Japanese market by rushing their product out, even a year ahead of the Sony device, was the greatest folly Microsoft could have committed. Had they REALLY supported HDDVD, they would have waited to bring their product to market, and included a HD-DVD player standard.

    BlueRay has won the format wars before they even begun. Look at how profitable Sony made the completely proprietary UMD movie simply because they can profit from their own film distribution division. Neither Microsoft, nor the Toshiba consortium, have this advantange. Thus laying the final nail in the coffin.

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    Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
  3. I'm voting HD-DVD ... by packetmill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    because I find it hard to put money in something with the word "blu" in it.

    I mean, how hard is it to add the e at the end, geniuses. A 2 year old could come up with a better marketing plan.

    Just..never mind.