Warner Bros. Announces Exclusive Suport of Blue Ray.

[rocketpig]

misterd said:

rocketpig said:

finalsquall said:

The point is, Sony ain't paying big dosh for studio support. HD DVD and MS have.

Microsoft has paid studios for HD-DVD?

I would love to see a link for that. Good luck finding a reliable one. 

 

It's a rumor that MS denies, though it has in the past admitted that it would not rule out the possibiity of offering "financial incentives." Transformers director Michael Bay, upset that his film would not be on BluRay, flat out stated that MS is paying studios for HDDVD support, but so far as I know could provide no evidence or first hand knowlege.

Today's Digital Bits editorial (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents) states that BOTH sides were offering large sums to WB to commit one way or the other (likley WB going HDDVD would have extended the war another year or more). Relevent text"

Of course, there's already finger-pointing in some quarters, including comments that "large sums of money were obviously involved" to get Warner to switch. If anyone thinks payoffs were the sole reason for Warner's decision, they don't know as much about this business as they'd like to think. It's well worth nothing that BOTH camps these past few weeks were offering extraordinary up-front payments and other incentives to Warner to go exclusive to their format - sums that make the Paramount/DreamWorks deal to go HD-DVD exclusive look like unsalted peanuts. Warner clearly took the deal that offered them not just short-term gain, but also the best potential long-term benefit as well.

Unfortunately, they don't have any evidence for their claims either, though I have found their reporting to be accurate in the past.

Think about it for a minute:

What financial incentive does Microsoft have to throw $150m at a studio for a format where they stand to earn no money? Wouldn't you think the company would rather drop the price of the 360 another $50 in hopes of selling 3m more consoles? It makes absolutely no sense for them to throw that kind of money at a studio for HD-DVD.

Toshiba, on the other hand...

PS. Michael Bay is a moron on top of being a shitty director. He went on a rant about Microsoft wanting to confuse the situation to ultimately profit through their download service but even he wasn't dumb enough to state that Microsoft was the one moneyhatting the studio. It just doesn't make sense if you stop to think about it. There are many other ways that MS could spend that money to better help their own company instead of playing patron saint to Toshiba's format.