| MikeB said: Personally I think the reason why Microsoft is behind HD DVD is mainly to confuse consumers and prolong the battle between Blu-Ray and HD DVD standards, knowing well that HD DVD is going to lose eventually. IMO this is at the cost of most consumers who rather prefer clarity. If the battle for the high definition format would have been more democratic there wouldn't have been a format war, it would be Blu-Ray and nothing else. IMO one of the most severe cases of misinformation is that Microsoft pretends that they are giving people a choice between Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Yet they only offer HD DVD as an option, sure they can later release an external Blu-Ray drive (likewise an external HD DVD drive or maybe even a firmware update [backward compatibility, like some Blu-Ray players will allow] could allow the same with regard to the PS3), but the HD DVD drive they currently offer to consumers cannot even be used to benefit games... |
MS do not pretend to give consumers the choice between Blu-ray and HD DVD. They said they consider HD DVD the superior format which is why they are offering it for their customers' benefit. However, they do give consumers the choice between HD DVD and not upgrading at all. Sony forces consumers to upgrade to Blu-ray even if they just want to play games and don't care about movies. Why is it a bad thing that the Xbox 360 cannot use HD DVDs for games? This is actually a good thing because otherwise the HD DVD drive couldn't be optional and MS would have to force their customers to pay for technology that they might not want at all.
I agree that HD DVD seems to be just a means for MS to sabotage Sony's ambitions of establishing the new standard for optical media rather than something that they would really like to succeed, but taken that into account HD DVD is probably doing better than both Toshiba and MS might have even dreamt of, also given the fact that all HD DVD players have been bought willingly by consumers, unlike at least half of the sold Blu-ray players which were forced upon their current owners.
Why would there be "just Blu-ray and nothing else if the battle for the high definition format would have been more democratic"? The official DVD successor is HD DVD, not Blu-ray. The point is that Blu-ray is surviving only because the hardware is forced upon the consumers - which is the opposite of "democratic" in my book. If it had not been for the PS3, Blu-ray would surely be dead by now.
