My money says Sony will do everything necessary to win the Blu-Ray vs HD-Dvd war.
A loss in this war would shake consumer confidence in Sony for decades.
Sony has already effectively won the format war, just people aren’t recognizing it yet.
They have the overwelming number of studios onboard as blu-ray or exclusive blu ray.. Want a Disney DVD is High Def? Guess what, only exists in Blu Ray.. same with many other movie houses.
Add the fact that in the last 9 months more than 3 million households got a Blu-Ray player with their PS3, plus sales of the dedicated Blu-Ray players, combined with exclusive content you have a clear winner.
HD-DVD was and should have stayed dead. Sony’s decision to make Blu Ray part of the PS3 has hurt the consoles overall adoption due to the price point it has put the system at, but it has helped Sony win a much more lucrative market in the DVD HiDef format war.
MS through some last minute weight behind HD-DVD to bring it back from the dead in hopes of harming Sony.. but at this point its pretty obvious that Sony clearly has the lead globally in the Format war.
All those guys talking about price and buying those “cheap” HD-DVD players that are coming out, well I hope you don’t have a 1080P TV.. because those cheap players can’t playback in that format.. best you are going to get is 720p. You want 1080P out of your HD-DVD player it costs the same as Blu-Ray which is required to support all formats out of the box.
Already done to the tune of over a billion dollars in losses, which is what their gaming division has taken trying to put out the PS3 with its very expensive Blu-Ray player at a loss (about $300 each).
As far as the PS3's possible effect in this new standards war:
May Sales:
Wii: 338,000
XBox 360: 154,900
PS3: 81,600
Nintendo is pretty much out of the equation, except in its place as the dominant console, which may leach any sales from the others. But Microsoft's HD-DVD capable 360 sold over 73,000 more units than the PS3 (and the 360 actually sold about 20K fewer units than April). Given current volumes of regular HD players, this is a huge chunk, even if not everybody gets the HD player for the 360.