Does the Wii prove that the HD razor/blade model is flawed?

[MaxwellGT2000]

Squilliam said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:

bdbdbd said:
@raygun: Wii has easilly 18 games i want to buy. That's to add to the more than 18 games i already own for it.

You know, you may not notice but you just pointed out the stupidity in Sonys strategy. Since you obviously want to watch BD; if PS3 didn't have BD player in it, you had bought a BD player to go with your 16 BD:s. Now Sony sold you a BD player they made loss with, instead of selling a standalone player that had been sold at a profit. Sounds like they lost money twice with selling you the PS3.

Interesting way to look at it, though Sony had a lot of money invested into Blu-ray so it had to trump HD-DVD, best way to do that is offer a way for people to get a multipurpose device that is significantly better than just a HD DVD player and so a PS3 sold at a loss to customers not only let them have HD movies but games as well.  A much better investment for consumers, and in turn, a way to keep a leg up on HD-DVD.

Panasonic is the one who really benefited from Sony's decision to put Blu Ray in the PS3 because they another significant patent holder and they didn't lose as much money getting the format onto its feet. Also its quite probable that Panasonic profited from Sony's decision as their patents are focused on the player technology itself so getting a lot of players out there is a lot of royalty payments to Panasonic whereas Sony's Blu Ray fabrication in only just approaching break even now with a LOT of money invested in plant capital which will still need to be depreciated over the coming years. Sony makes their royalty money more on selling a lot of Blu Ray discs.

As computers are moving away from Blu Ray as a medium for transfering files because online distribution and flash discs are taking off for their ease of use, they will not sell nearly in the same league the quantity of burnable write once or rewriteable discs as DVD.

So even if you say that Blu Ray was an effective part of Sony's Razor/blade strategy, they may not be the biggest winner from their own strategy.

Great points.  Though I've always viewed Blu-Ray as rather pointless especially with HD videos being streamed online and internet ready TVs around the corner, its just a matter of time before streaming becomes the big thing in movies as it provides many more advantages and the same quality.  Blu-Ray will end up being used when DL DVDs become cumbersome to put applications onto IE many discs, which may or may not be taken over by downloading said applications online.  

As of right now the best prospects for Blu Ray will be games as there are many game buyers that are collectors and like to trade/buy used, those people won't move over into digital distribution like the other fields and if game sizes increase next gen Blu-Ray might shine then, as for this gen Blu-ray has only minimally useful for certain games and even has hindered some by making it harder to have quick load times, and long installs for other games, to the point where I've had to "clean the fridge" on my PS3, which is typically a term reserved for cleaning out the half gig memory of the Wii when you max it out.

So I'm not saying Blu-ray was the smart move cause it might not pay off until next gen which may be a gamble but if the next Xbox and new Nintendo console start using blu-ray discs that could be good for Sony, if HD DVD had won all investments into blu-ray for Sony would have been a loss.  Personally I think Sony should have kept the PS3 with just DVD tech made a cheaper console, made blu-ray players really in demand by bringing a lot of studios over to make movies for it and beating HD-DVD without having to drag the PS3 into it.  Then save Blu-ray tech for next gen when games will need it more, plus the tech becomes better so they can load faster without installs.