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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.'"
Sony Set to Market Blu-ray as Winner of Format War
Are they also going to market their laptops as the winner of the battery war?
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
"Citing the recent sales numbers, Sony exec David Bishop is claiming that the next gen console war can officially be declared over. Looks like the Wii and 360 are the winners."
Perhaps they shouldn't be gloating.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
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.
If thats the case, divx avi movies rule the world ;)
liqbase
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
But, how many new VHS movie titles were released last month?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
HD-DVD proponents throw up arms and say "That just about wraps it up for us". They began packing up the manufacturing plants and began work on other projects.
In other news, Apple declares victory over vista because of the ratio of new apple ads to new microsoft ads.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Of course Blu-Ray is the winner, it is by far a superior format. HD-DVD is nothing but DVD with 2 extra letters who wants to buy something unimaginitive, but Blu-Ray thats new and exciting. Its "blue" wich means advanced cause aliens are blue, and ray makes me think of an awsome ray gun from all those sci-fi movies. Its friggin advanced alien technology that Sony got its hands on hundreds of years before any other company. How could it not be the leader.
How many coaches at halftime ever say they're going to lose the game?
That being said, IMHO this won't be a VHS versus Betamax thing. There is too much manufacturing set up for both sides to simply abandon one format. 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.
The loser in this format war will still make money, but it will have to do it by underselling the winner. Lower prices, bigger numbers. 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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
With a movie sale ratio of almost 2:1
Unfortunately, he forgot to mention that those were also the actual numbers of discs sold.
This coming from the same company that owes me $9,600 for all the PS3's at my local walmart! source
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Sony doing something idiotic? Naw...
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
The primary thing that decides the success or failure of a format is content available on it. There's only one HD-DVD exclusive studio (Universal). There are quite a few that are Blu-Ray only, including all of the Sony studios and Disney. There are rumors of Universal throwing in the towel on HD-DVD.
Besides, Blu Ray is a better format. 50 GB per disk allows for lower compression ratios and uncompressed multichannel sound. The only advantage HD-DVD has is the "extras" and "interactivity features". I don't know about you, but I don't give a shit about picture-in-picture that they push so heavily. I just want to watch the goddamn movie.
As if this wasn't enough, Blu Ray also enjoys much broader industry support, including Apple (which gives you a hint as to what Final Cut / DVD Studio types will be using) and Dell. PS3 is by far the best value on the market as far as 1080p players are concerned. The fact that it plays games as well is gravy. Xbox HD-DVD add-on has an abysmal attach rate, and even if it did have a better attach rate, Xbox doesn't support HDMI, so it's not an option for folks who want an entirely digital signal path.
So there you have it.
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.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.