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Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War
An anonymous reader writes "Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the high-def format war can officially be declared over. With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1 Blu-ray discs are being declared the victor over rival HD-DVD by Blu-ray supporter Sony. 'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'"
Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
And these are the same people who already believe that the PS3 is the winner of the console wars against the 360 and the Wii, even though sales numbers in the US and even Japan say otherwise.
Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.
:-P
Seriously, is this the same Sony who last week said the fact that they're being outsold by Nintendo doesn't mean they're losing, it means we shouldn't be counting Nintendo.
I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.
Oh well, it's their Kool-Aid, they can drink it all they want.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I see no need to do anything other than wait 3 or 4 years until this whole thing sorts itself out. I've lived for 30+ years in an NTSC world, and I just don't see any compelling reason to shell out thousands on new hardware to be an early adoptor for what amounts to nothing more than television.
Of course, I've been waiting 3 or 4 years already for this to happen, and it hasn't yet - which makes me look all the wiser for not investing in new hardware in 2003...
'And yet while all agree that it was a strong month for Blu-ray, opinion is split on whether the surge in sales is an indicator of stronger user adaption of Blu-ray compared to HD DVD, or simply a reflection of the larger number of new Blu-ray titles that hit the market over the month -- 25 new Blu-ray titles were released in January, compared to just 11 titles on HD DVD for the same period.'
Wouldn't the fact that there are over twice as many new releases for BD than for HD-DVD in itself be an important indicator of stronger adoption of BD?
Rob
25 new Blu-Ray releases and 11 HD-DVD releases in one month?
Beta was still around for 27 years. I have a feeling that the two sides will be able to co-exist for quite some time (especially with the duel-format players that are close to release).
i ain't gonna buy till price drops to $99. so 4 me, whichever one sells first for $99, is the winner.
With BluRay in every PS3, HD-DVD not an integral part of any shipping product yet, and BluRay movies starting to outsell HD-DVD, there good reason to be betting on the BluRay horse. BluRay market penetration should outstrip HD-DVD, unless they're able to pull a VHS in pricing or capacity.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When that happens, the loser will most likely wind up as a cheap burner you can stick on an IDE cable. And I'm really looking forward to that for data storage.
More likely, it'll wind up like the format war between DVD-R and DVD+R: you'll get a player capable of reading both formats, so it won't matter and the prices of the movies will be roughly equivalent.
If anything, consumers will pay for the war indirectly through hardware costs that integrate both solutions transparently.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
"What I'm hoping happens is that one of the two becomes the dominant format (which it almost certainly will), and the other one will become the "ghetto" HD format."
I think another likely scenario is dual format players. Remember we had a format war just a few years ago with DVD+R and DVD-R and it was negated when dual format burners came out. If we do get dual format players it seems possible HD-DVD could become the more prominent format since it has plenty of space for full length movies *and* is cheaper to produce. Of course Blu-Ray has stronger DRM from what I understand so maybe studios will stick with that format as much as possible.
You know, joke aside, it's a very good point. And, in fact, the same lesson should be taken: Just because one is selling well, it doesn't spell the doom of a competitor.
Sony's just doing a bit of grandstanding to try to get more people to buy Blu-ray: "The format war is over! We won!" Fear sells, and they're attempting to boost their sales by saying the competition is doomed; one of the oldest sales tactics in existence.
Just like consoles, the success of one does not mean the demise of another. There's no reason why both can't succeed, no reason why "there must be one."
Cases in point:
CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM (Cell phones). There's no small amount of grief that this caused, and the solution was to build phones that do all of 'em. Oddly enough, that's what is starting to happen with the "HD" optical discs.
PS3 vs. Wii vs. Xbox
Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows
Apple's music vs. everything else...
And so on...
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
$99 huh? $100 too rich for your blood?
.01 ?
It's comments like yours (and likely your real life buying habits) that result in such inane dishonest mental pricing games played by marketers.
"No one will buy this car for $20,000... but if you price it $19,999.99 you'll have to beat them away with a stick!"
Wouldn't you rather live in a world where prices were nice even multiples instead of $NICE_EVEN_MULTIPLE -
Wait a minute, the losing format will make a profit by producing bigger numbers than the dominant format?
Wouldn't that make it the dominant format?