Is winning the HD movie format worth losing game cosole leadership

[Gamerace]

First off - I agree we don't know what we're talking about. No one here has any figures about how much Sony stands to gain from Blu-ray dominance.

Secondly - I agree there plan was to dominate both, not either/or. This is a disaster for Sony, but winning the format war could still be a saving grace, as would PS3 coming in 2nd and achieving profittablity (lifetime).

Third - This format war stalemate is another disaster. I doubt Sony expected anything but domination by now. As long as the formats are competing both are losing as people play 'wait and see'.

Forth - Technology is changing too fast for Sony to wait this out. By the time Blu-ray 'wins' and starts to make Sony serious money, it's could become obsolete. Downloads, Video-on-Demand, newer, better Terra-byte disks are all going to threaten blu-rays lifespan. And that's what we already have, something totally new could be out in 2-3 years that changes everything like Ipods did to music.

Firth - Of the people I know who have HD TV's not a single one bought it for HD. They got it because of large screen size with none of the bulk of regular tvs. They all use dvd's on them and none of them really understand what HD-DVD/Blu-ray really are. Yes, if Blu-ray became dominate then the industry itself might phase DVD out in time, but consumers will do little to help this themselves.

In conclusion - Sony took a big gamble with the PS3 and it is not paying off. Best case scenario at this point would be to break even and call it a wash.