Regards to #1
Why in gods name would Sony give the blu-ray rights to microsoft?
So MS can sell more X-Boxes?
Give?
It’s not really their’s alone to sell or not to sell. The BR Disc Association is who sells the licenses and it made up of stakeholders from every area of the market (many manufacturers, content developers, content distributors, etc.) Nearly all have incentives towards getting as many BRD players into the hands of consumers as possible - even Sony. If you already own an Xbox and can get a BR player for it, what better reason to also be in the market for a Sony HDTV, right?