Should the PS3 have had Blu Ray?

[Zappykins]

**Great thread by the way!

"Good post. But I'm confused. Do you think Sony would have been better off without Blu Ray or no."

Thanks! Actually, I'm really not sure either! (But I get to an answer at the end of the it.) The only way for Blu-ray to have won is to have it in the PS3 at launch. But the war erased any big profits Sony was expecting to make - because, now with streaming, few need to buy the Blu-ray disk, where now the HD format should have been killing DVD sales. BR is not selling that much, because fewer people have blu-ray players than would be expected at this stage (because of the war). They missed the time when consumers would have bought a bunch of disk.

I think it's best summed up that the whole format war was a failure. It should not have happened - as many people, companies and producers lost out (including Sony). And it seems that one can hold Sony responsible for walking away from the talks and causing the 'HD Format War' to happen by refusing to compromise with last bit of negotiations. (Microsoft makes the AC-1 format used to capture many films before they downgrade it 1080P - it makes a logical choice to have they write the software of the HD format - and the majority of manufactures wanted it- but Sony refused and wanted manufacturing AND software control.)

Blu-ray is still not natively supported by Apple or Windows, and I think it is unlikely (but not impossible) that it will be in the next Xbox. It is like fighting over a city - but burning it down in the process - so all you win is a few houses and some rubble. Even Windows 8 will not support native DVD playing.

With increasing higher quality digital streaming being the norm, and ever increasing speed and data. I think disk are the way of the floppy.

If the PS3 would have launch with a DVD player, and at the same price as the Xbox 360, the world might look very different now. The PS2 was huge in market share, and Sony could have kept those consumers in the Playstation family. But they let in a big door open - and Microsoft walked in.  So I think having a high cost, with Blu-ray was ultimately bad for the Playstation legacy.  So my answer is No. (Now, a separate another discussion - if the Wii had decent 720p I might not have an Xbox 360.)