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jarrod on 07 July 2010
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Mr Puggsly said:
Solid_Snake4RD said:
Mr Puggsly said:

5) I wonder how much they'll make off Bluray royalties. Was it worth making the PS3 a disaster?

do you even have any idea what you can make from a formaty royalties.the losses made by the PS3 will be easily wiped out

Were the standard DVD royalties that worthless?

they weren't worthless but they were dying and slowly decreasing in amount to as DVD forum cuts the royalty fees to continue demand

and if they didn't go with BLU-RAY then HD-DVD would have won and they  would have got nothing.

but now they are getting both DVD and BLU-RAY royalties

5) Seems like a lot of people get royalties from Bluray. Lets all hope their share is enough to cover the PS3.

"Easily wiped out" is something I've never seen supported by hard numbers, anywhere.  Sony's take on Blu-Ray royalties is said to be under 30%, and even less than rival electronics maker Panasonic (who also supplies Nintendo's optical formats btw).  Sony & Phillips basically had to bring so many companies on board to ensure the format's victory (including rival content firms like Disney and initial HD-DVD backer Warner), that they've locked themselves out of the lucrative sort of royalties they started the platform for... the way things went, they might as well have gone with DVD Forum submission.  Sony's still getting a bigger take than they did from DVD (they barely got anything there, Toshiba's standards really took most) but far, far less than they got off CD-ROM (whose patents, and thus royalties, expired in 2001), and worse they had to basically sacrifice their most valuable product line (PlayStation) in a needless format war of their own making.

Also, the BR Group has been steeply dropping license fees to help further drive adoption, try to bring Chinese manufacturers back on board (after CBHD has decimated them in Asiaq) and due to content provider outcries (many of whom now sit on the same board), they've been precipitously dropping fees (far faster than DVD did), meaning even less return from Sony's perspective.  At best I think Blu-Ray can be seen as a pyrrhic victory for PS3's failure, most analysts agree the format won't be as lucrative as DVD, CD or VHS, digital content delivery is on the verge of taking over for film and emerging as a force for games, and I'd say it's very arguable if Sony in the long view has actually gained more from Blu-Ray's victory than they have lost from the downfall of and damage to the PlayStation brand...