BluRay in PS3 was Win/Win for Sony

[LordTheNightKnight]

makingmusic476 said:

LordTheNightKnight said:
From all the articles I've read, the PS3 was not the major factor in Blu-Ray winning. I don't care how many times some of you may deny that. You have to prove those articles wrong (and they are everywhere, from engadget, to kotaku, to Associated Press).

Sony made the right deals to secure studio and retail support. Toshiba didn't. HD-DVD lost shelf space and new releases. That is what lost the format. The PS3 didn't make those happen. The right people in Sony and the BDA did.

And since I'm crediting people at both Sony and the BDA, it should logically be clear I am not bashing Blu-Ray and the PS3.

Sony also turned the PS3 around by making sure games caught up to the system, and by redoing the insides of the PS3 to make it cost less, not only by getting the Bu-Ray diode costs down, but also getting a new motherboard, as the last one was apparently the most expensive part of the system.

Putting the Blu-Ray on the PS3 was not a fatal move (which I wasn't the one claiming, in case anyone thinks I did), but it was not the reason either is doing well. The PS3 lost money for two years. The Xbox lost for more, but this wasn't due to anything magical about the PS3. It was about people getting the system back on course.

In short, this reflects more one Sony as a whole than Blu-Ray and the PS3 individually.

I agree with this. There's a reason Blu-Ray standalone players were outselling HD DVD standalone players over the holiday shopping season despite being almost twice as expensive. And then there are the people that bought a ps3 instead of a standalone player, but would've bought a standalone player if the ps3 had not been available.

The ps3 only helped Blu-Ray in two ways: First, the mass production of Blu-Ray drive components helped to decrease manufacturing costs of Blu-Ray players across the board, and second, it led to Blu-Ray quickly gaining back ground over the '06 holiday season. That's it. It didn't carry the format the entire time, it was just an added advantage in numbers over and above the BDA's other advantages.

Toshiba simply could not win with the entire CE industry and the majority of studios working against it, low prices or not.

 

And the standalone players was why Warner went to Blu-Ray, not the PS3 (although they could still have chosen a better time to do it, and not made Toshiba lose face at CES).