| Mummelmann said: @OP: I think the BluRay factor might be there, but significantly smaller than most think. Overall, this will be a very good year for the PS3 ww it seems. On a related note; I do find it funny that many argued earlier on the web that "no one buys a PS3 for games, only for BluRay", and these same people are now stating "BluRay doesn't matter and no one will buy a PS3 because of it since the price of players is going down. And who watches HD movies anyway?" Kinda funny, at least to those who have kept track of the format war over a few years. |
I have never argued either of those positions, but I have argued against the opposite positions ...
Blu-Ray movie playback and media center functionality is a major selling feature for the PS3, but is not a feature which has wide spread mainstream appeal yet; by the time Blu-Ray movie playback becomes a feature which has wide spread mainstream appeal it is unlikely that the PS3 will be nearly as inexpensive as a stand alone Blu-Ray player.
Blu-Ray "won" the format war even though HD-DVD sold far more stand alone movie players than Blu-Ray did; the reason for this is that every PS3 has a Blu-Ray player and, even if the average PS3 owner buys and rents far less Blu-Ray movies than a stand alone movie player owner, the massive quantity of PS3s (in comparison to stand alone HD-DVD players) ensured dominance in movie sales for Blu-Ray. This is what caused the shift of movie studios.
Outside of gamers there is still very little interest in this format war, and the only reason that it became important to gamers is because Microsoft and Sony backed opposing formats. If you look at DVD adoption, it will be several years before Blu-Ray breaks out and sees widespread mainstream interest; at the same time you have to consider that DVD had several advantages in that it was readily useable by everyone who owned a TV, and it had many benefits over VHS beyond higher quality.
