Blu-ray could be the next UMD, says MS

[Reasonable]

crumas2 said:

ctk495 said:
Microsoft should accept that the blu ray is succeding.

I'm still skeptical about Blu-ray "winning" considering the small sales percentages over all (you wouldn't call someone winning in tennis if the score was 15 to match point against them), but I certainly hope it does (I have an LCD HDTV and love HD movies).

I think MS would do a lot to kill Blu-ray if they could.  Comparing it to UMD, however, isn't a very convincing argument for reasons that have been driven into the ground already.

 

 

Good point on MS.  I believe they only backed HD DVD as a spoiling bid intended to harm both HD DVD and BR by prolonging the format war, which they knew would slow adoption of any new HD media greatly allowing them more time to get a viable digital offering in place and encourage that market.

 

They'd love to see BR fail even though the studios (as evidenced byDisney's recent comments) want it to succeed.  At the end of the day the studios and Sony, Samsung, etc. want to cover both digital and physical.  MS, probably because in truth its a minor player in the physical market and gets little out of it, would prefer to push digital adoption and see physical marketshare shrink more rapidly than its likely to.

 

As for BR adoption, well, every new format starts at zero while the encumbant format is at 100%.  From what I gather, and allowing for blips from recent economic troubles, it seems to be gathering pace and marketshare at an acceptable rate - for example apparently 20% of Iron Man sales on US were BR, with 50% of online purchases favouring BR.  With Dark Knight, Indy 4, etc. still to come BR is going to see big gains now with each 'tentpole' movie release on BR, particularly if the studios start pushing the BR version over DVD by giving it better extras, etc.