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Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the self-serving-prophets dept.

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.'"

12 of 353 comments (clear)

  1. Number of movies by SnarfQuest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aren't the number of movies available related to the popularity of the format?

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    1. Re:Number of movies by ngtvtw13ve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If that was true then wouldn't we still be buying vhs tapes?

    2. Re:Number of movies by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)

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      liqbase :: faster than paper
    3. Re:Number of movies by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Number of movies released in a particular month != total number of movies available

      I believe that prior to this particular month, HD-DVD was consistently ahead of Blu-Ray. Declaring a winner based on a single months' worth of statistics (especially at this early point when both formats are in their infancy) is utterly idiotic.

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    4. Re:Number of movies by SnarfQuest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But, how many new VHS movie titles were released last month?

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      Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
    5. Re:Number of movies by pluther · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the problem with this is, that most people don't know there's a format war going on.

      Those that do are the ones paying attention, and they probably won't be fooled by the marketing hype declaring Sony the winner.

      25 titles release in a month, compared to 11 for the competition, is far too small of a number to actually draw any kind of conclusion. Sure, it's more than twice as much, but with numbers this small impressive-sounding percentages are easy to come by.

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    6. Re:Number of movies by compro01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting... *ahem* I hereby declare myself the sexiest man alive!
      Now all I have to do is just repeat it often enough that everyone starts believing it... ;)

      well, if you repeat as much as sony's marketing budget would allow, it's likely that a number of people would start believing it.

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  2. Sure.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Nice of them .... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nice of Sony to declare themselves the winner. Now we can all get on with out lives.

    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. :-P

    Cheers

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  4. Numbers?? by Kelz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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).

  5. whichever sells first $99 player is the winner by u19925 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i ain't gonna buy till price drops to $99. so 4 me, whichever one sells first for $99, is the winner.

  6. Re:My thoughts exactly by Not_Wiggins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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