The person I originally replied to.

I didn't realize the format war was predicated on Blu-ray burners, I could have sworn it was about HD movie formats.  Those burners would have be completely useless in playing Blu-ray movies when NONE WERE RELEASED.

NO IT'S NOT, THE POINT BEING BEFORE Even the first HD DVD optical drive was created, Blu-Ray was alreay on the market and was already selling with a Product.The Majority of optical drive manuf. all ready decided to support Blu-Ray because it was already on the market and it worked. HD DVD was too late to the Party. with or Without The PS3 Blu-ray was going to win, The PS3 just sped up the Time Table, Toshiba, and Microsoft knew even than that HD DVD was not going to win. They did it to slow the adoption of Blu-Ray.

hahahahahahahah xD

Do you read what you type? What would Toshiba gain for pushing a format they knew wasn't going to live? What could they gain from preventing the growth of blu-ray?

How much could they lose for pushing a format they knew would die? Well, we know the answer to that one... http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST28076020080313

Imagine if they had released a motion controller for PS2 and put all of their marketing muscle into combating the Wii.

This gen could have looked very different if they did that.

PS2 is last gen even if it is still selling it is last gen. PS2 was up against Gamecube and Xbox. PS2 is dying off and well it was the top system of last gen so it not that shocking it still sells. Where did you even get these numbers because Every week PS2 sales never are even close to X360 from what I have seen.

i wanted to avoid this thread, but this is impressive. this just means sony could've (should've) held off on relesing the ps3 for atlease 1 yr. looks like the 10yr plan is'nt smoke and mirros (PR) like some gamers would have you beleave.

With that many PS2 consoles and software sold it's a wonder why they didn't keep the b/c in the PS3?  It would have probably enabled the PS3 to sell more in the long run.  Anyways, does any know? 

LOL

If you think the format war was won by the release of niche, expensive, non-spec, Japanese only Blu-ray burners that were out before there were even movies released on the format then all I can say is you are delusional.  The purpose of those drives was as a storage medium, not a HD movie playback medium, which is a good thing because there were no Blu-ray movies available for over 2 YEARS!

Please show me ANY sales data on those drives that shows it led to significant traction vs HD-DVD.

In reality, the sales of the MOVIES was very much in HD-DVDs favour before the PS3 launched.

vgchartz.com

the data was not tracked and there was no reason to track the data. Hell even Toshiba was ready to DROP HD DVD in 2005. the only reason why was because of IHD Microsoft wanted to Slow Adoption of Blu-Ray, they Knew it was slim to no chance to make it when the main majority of Optical drive companies all decided on Blu-Ray well before 2004. Toshiba was the only Hold out and Even they were ready to throw in the towl, until Microsoft stepped in.

Blu-ray Says No to Microsoft, and Vice Versa: 2004.
HP in turn invited Microsoft to also support Blu-ray for playback under Windows, which HP would need for the Blu-ray equipped PCs it sold. According to an article by Peter Burrows in BusinessWeek, Microsoft demanded that the Blu-ray group adopt its WinCE-based iHD for developing interactive content (since renamed to HDi) in order to sign on.

Somewhat ironically, the Blu-ray group had already adopted BDj, an interactive authoring system developed by HP. BDj is based upon Sun’s Java platform. Content developed for BDj is intended to be easily adapted for delivery not just on Blu-ray disc, but also over cable systems.

The Blu-ray Disc Association “did a three month side-by-side evaluation and concluded that iHD didn’t offer enough advantages to make a switch worthwhile,” Burrows reported. “Microsoft was livid.” In September 2005, Microsoft and Intel announced their exclusive support for HD-DVD, which had already included HDi as a mandatory part of the specification.

Bill Hunt of Digital Bits explained to InternetNews that Toshiba was ready to drop HD-DVD and join Blu-ray in 2005 until an unnamed company, which Hunt believes to be Microsoft, “pressured the company to stick with HD DVD since so much time and money had been invested in it.”

“Everything I’ve been told,” Hunt said, “is a lot of people in the HD DVD camp were ready to throw in the towel in late 2005 and something kept them from doing it. Microsoft seems to be the company that is running around crowing the loudest about HD DVD.”