Every day were hearing new reports about how blu-ray as sales are skyrocketing. Universal must be worried so when the time comes for Universal to thrown in the towel and leave Toshiba holding the bag with HD-DVD everything will go the way of Blu-ray and Sony will finally have a major foothold in the DVD market until electronic distribution is the norm. So when Microsoft decides to make there next gen 360 and wants to add in Blu-Ray Sony makes money off it, will they actually pay Sony to use there format or will Microsoft go E-distribution first? Will Sony go soft an allow Microsoft to use Blu-Ray at a decent cost? Or will they make them pay big time for making the PS3 start harder than it had to be? What do you think will happen? Or will they put the cost of the increase back on gamers saying it cost more to develop games once again?

Electronic distribution is VERY near. It's very possible that future-gen systems will only have a disc drive for proprietary purpose. I don't see microsoft adopting bluray.

Why must this be a SOny vs Microsoft thing for gamers? Sony didn't create blu ray by themselves. 9 companies did. Vista supports blu ray does that mean MS conceded defeat? Viao's have windows XP and Vista on them does that mean MS wins? Both of these companies work togather on various projects to help eachother make money. Only hardcore fans of consoles seem to think that this is personal.

E-distribution will not replace discs anymore than the internet will replace televsion (which didn't replace radio [which in turn didn't replace the written word]). I don't know how much retailers would enjoy stocking these systems if they couldn't sell games. Besides, not every consumer has cable television, never mind high speed internet connections. Does everybody remember how long computers came with those silly floppy drives? If Microsoft were so inclined they could buy BD-DVD's from Matsushita among others. They could pass on any licencing costs to the consumer.