NJ5 said:
I have yet to see any indication of how much Blu-Ray can earn them (not to mention that damaging a brand just to win a format war is far from being a great idea). It's certainly good for Sony that they won this format war, but it's not at all clear that it will be enough to offset the multi-billion $ losses they have incurred so far. I don't even know how much they would earn if Blu-Ray sold a lot, and it's not yet guaranteed that it will (due to its battle with DVD+movie downloads).
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The royalties from disc sales will amount to quite a pretty penny over time. Why else has Toshiba sparred with Sony so adamently over HDM?
Edit: In my opinion, Blu-Ray will take over DVD faster than DVD took over VHS. HDM is already doing much better against DVD than DVD v. VHS 18 months into the format war, and I think that this is happening primarily because of backwards compatibility. All Blu-Ray/HD DVD players can still play DVDs, and they make them look better to boot. This is something that DVD players could not do for VHS. Because of this, people can upgrade without having to either keep an old player around, or ditch their old collection of movies. It makes upgrading worry free.
Another reason Blu-Ray will inevitably take over DVD is because CEs will eventually stop selling DVD players. Eventually the price differnece between players will be negligible, so eventually CEs will start selling dvd players that happen to play Blu-Ray. It's no negative to the consumer, but it will ensure one format across the industry (if only for a short while until the next format comes).
Once Blu-Ray takes 80%+ marketshare, studios will stop releasing films on DVD.
