Sony doesn't manufacture VAIO's hardware except some of the displays. Sony can sell OSless Vaios and anyone can load it.

I thought Sony owned like 10% of blu ray? I read that somewhere but im nit going to look it up

No, but IIRC Sony is the biggest member of the Blu-ray... thingy.

You sure it's not Pioneer?

Sony is just one member of the BluRay Disc Association which governs the format. While Sony may receive royalties as a partner in the organization. Their power is finite. Most especially their power of persuasion. Any such clause just wouldn't be in the formats best interest. Not only would foster future competition from parties that were blocked out of licensing. That would result in all of the members losing out on potential profit. Not just on licensing fees for each disc sold, or the technology to run the discs. Which many of the partners manufacture. It would also slow the adoption, and keep the technology from achieving even wider acceptance.

This of coarse is all entirely moot, because this story is entirely contrary to Sony's publicly stated intent. The fact of the matter is that Sony asked Microsoft to adopt the format for their consoles. Let me say that again they asked Microsoft to put the tech in their system, and to support the format. Why would they do that, and then opt to cock block Microsoft from getting in bed with them. Microsoft actually has plenty of choices. It isn't like BluRay is the only high capacity format in town. There are a lot of companies shopping their disc formats around right now. Some with substantially better specification as far as raw storage, faster reading speeds, and power consumption.

This person obviously doesn't know what they are talking about.

 You sir saved me from having to make a comment. 

Impossible.

lol even if this crap were true and Sony had an exclusive deal for consoles, MS would know about it before they spent millions on R&D for a console to utilize it.

Seems pretty unlikely.

If Sony did have an exclusive right to use blu ray in consoles, why have we not heard about it until now? Why did no-one mention it years ago when people were predicting the blu ray 360 addon/new SKU?

Why does the source not link to the deal signed by Sony? If this is true, it would be very easy to prove it true.

Why, if it is true, would it cause a delay in the 720 release? Surely MS's lawyers would have found out quite some time ago and they would have taken it into account already.

I'm calling BS unless someone can link me to the terms of Sony's deal.