So Sony really got it right with Blu Ray

[KBG29]

I still love seeing people try to say;

1. Blu-ray will never overtake DVD.

2. Blu-ray in the PS3 was one of SCE's worst moves with PS#.

The reality is;

1. Blu-ray will not only take over for DVD, but exceed beyond what DVD ever was. Many factors are going to make this an easly achivable reality. The first thing that is going to make Blu-ray so popular is exactly what people keep saying is going to kill it. Every single Blu-ray player will do streaming rentals in some way in the very near future. Sony, Samsung, and LG have already released players that do so, and they are the best selling players on the market.

The next big advantage that Blu-ray will have over DVD is the expanding market. Very highly populated countries like China and India are starting to become part of the global market. In the next five years the growth is going to cause the market for games and movies to double. Just go look look up India and China and the expaniding market on Google.

The final reason why Blu-ray will easly steam roll DVD in a very short amount of time is due to production cost and b/c. Blu-ray may be expensive at the moment, but one of the things that has been touted about since the idea of BD was the inexpensive and envionmently freindlyness it can accomplish in time. As we move forward and the cost goes down into the $99 and then $50 price ranges over the next 2 years Blu-ray is going to be the only logical choice for consumers. Buying a player will make all their old movies look better, and Blu-ray movies will be down at a consumer freindly price point.

2. Blu-ray in the PS3 is one of the best things that could have ever happened to the system. Sure it may have given it a weak start, but a weak start means nothing in the long run. The advantages of Blu-ray are really starting to shine, and there are many examples of this coming next year. Games that can only be done thanks to the storage copacity of Blu-ray. Heavy rain is probably the best example of this. That amount of assets in the game combine with the amount of levels, and the quick pace would make a multi disc version a hassle. Many games coming in the next 12 months to PS3 are taking advantage of the space by making games that get away from reusing assets throught the experiance. These game will be very believable experinaces that only last 10 to 12 hours, but would be impossible to replicate with less than the 50GB available to their developer. If ported to the 360, these games would result in players switching discs every 45 minute to an hour. That is not an acceptable scenario.

Another huge advantage that Blu-ray is going to give PS3 is the ability to combine games and movies on one disc. We already saw this one time with the releas of Stranglehold which paked in the movie Hardboiled with the Special addition on the PS3. Over the next couple of years we have many movies based on games coming out, and the 100GB Blu-ray disc is going to become a very viable delivery platform in the near future due to extended knowledge on the format. This will allow Sony to package games like Uncharted with the movie based on the game all on one disc. This will help expand the market in a lot of differant ways, and I am very exited to see it happen in the future.

Finally, possibly the best thing about the inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 is something that I stated in the section about BR vs. DVD. Markets like India and China are growing, and at the current time they have not yet moved into this generation of consoles. To this point the only company that has stepped in and really given interest into these markets is Sony. As the average yearly income creeps up over the next couple of years in these countries and the prices of PS3 fall the two will have a nice meeting in the middle. This will help expand the PS3's market by a large number, and even better yet we will start to see games emerging out of these countires giving us even more new games, and making our gaming lifes even richer.