| albionus said: But but but, Sony already won. That's all I keep hearing at least. Seriously though, this isn't surprising. If the video game race isn't settled after 2 years and about 15% of systems sold then the format race is even less settled after only 1 year and less than 1% of new players/movies sold. |
The video game race is completely different from a format war. Consumers don't want to be cought on the losing side of the format war, so they tend to wait things out for a while then jump in with whatever format seems to be winning. In video games, most people don't care who's "winning". They just go with the system that they like, for whatever reason, because they know their investment is safe (unless another Dreamcast happens).
All the people that buy the losing format will be virtually screwed in 5-6 years, because they won't be able to find hardware or software for that format anymore, so once their player goes, or if they lose a movie, there's nothing they can do about it, and they can't continue to buy new movies on the format, forcing them to adopt the other format and paying for two players instead of just one. With video games it's different, because you can be assured that ps3s and ps3 software will be sold until the ps4 comes out, if not long after, even if the ps3 finishes far in third place.
My point is that, in a format war, once one side starts winning handily, things begin to snowball. More people begin to jump into the new formats on the side of the winning format, because they don't fear losing out. Then, the winning side ends up even further in the lead, helping to ensure it's victory.
In the video game war, things could change drastically year to year, depending on developer support and other factors, resulting in a turn of the tide for one system, because people will still buy that system even if it is "losing" because they won't actually lose anything, just because the system has a smaller marketshare. They won't be stuck with a near worthless item. Betamax players, anyone?
Of course, things could turn out the like the video game wars often do, should dual format players become the norm. But then, neither side really "lost" anyway.
