Microsoft Fueling HD Wars For Own Benefit?

DaveyJJ writes "According to Transformers' director Michael Bay, in a story over on Electronista, Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, he says in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand."

Comments

Alternative explanations

[KingSkippus]

...Or maybe it's because Microsoft has been a strong backer of the format since the very beginning, and doesn't want it to end up like all of Sony's other consumer device formats. (Betamax, MiniDisc, Memory Stick, SACD, UMD...)

...Or maybe it's because HD-DVD is the format that its cash cow video game console system supports, whereas they have nothing to do with Blu-ray.

Of course, I could just be grasping at straws.

At any rate, I do think he is right in that neither format will be the choice for obtaining and playing hi-def content, online distribution ultimately will win.

Re:Alternative explanations

[$RANDOMLUSER]

...because HD-DVD is the format that its cash cow video game console system supports...

And, alternately, Blu-ray is what Playstation 3 supports, which I think is more like what thier real motivation is - Xbox vs PS3.