Pinkie_pie said:
archbrix said:
I think we can all agree that the Switch is the correct answer here.
But the PS3 no longer selling at a loss (which took until 2010) and Sony making money on its PS3 endeavor overall are two very different things. At the end of the day, Sony ended very much in the red for the PS3 era.
And Blu-ray winning out over HD-DVD had way more to do with production companies than it did the PS3 and would have won with or without Sony's console featuring the media. The only big movie production company that was exclusively backing HD-DVD was Universal until Paramount, stupidly, decided to do the same at the last minute. This prompted the last big hold out, Warner Bros, to go exclusive with Blu-ray, which sealed the deal. Once that happened, Paramount made note of a specific contractual clause in its exclusive support of HD-DVD that stated that the deal was only for 6 months if Warner, again, the last big hold out, chose to side with Blu-ray, which it did.
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PS3 did make profit its last few years did it not? Never did I say it fully recovered but PS3 did make a comeback. Just look at the hardware and software sales in the 2nd half of its cycle. PS3 helped Blu Ray victory over HD DVD and you can't deny that. Whether it would've won without Sony including it in the PS3; we don't know for sure but it's definitely did help and end the format war early
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The Playstation 3 launched, along with Blu-ray, in 2006. The war between HD-DVD and BD was still on-going, with Universal still exclusive and Paramount and Warner Bros still supporting both. In early January of 2008 (shortly after Paramount sided with HD-DVD) is when Warner Bros finally went Blu-ray exclusive. A month later, with Paramount’s "temporary exclusivity" clause now in effect, Universal finally threw in the towel and HD-DVD was pretty much officially dead. So we do know for sure that it would have won because that’s when it happened, not when Sony included it with PS3. The amount that it helped the PS3 was somewhat negated by the fact that its inclusion made the console too expensive for the mass market, almost defeating the purpose.
However, I agree regarding Blu-ray picking up more when the PS3 started gaining later but there’s no reason that could not have still happened. Sony still would have been actively supporting BD in the market the entire time (players, movies) and could have easily made a Blu-ray playing PS3 at the end of 2009 or so that would have been great for sales. Most people would not have cared that the games weren’t actually on that format, just that they could now buy a Blu-ray playing PS3. Think of a $399 DVD based PS3 in 2006. The Xbox 360‘s install base was still quite modest at that point. I think Sony could have taken 30m+ sales from the 360 and ultimately made lots of money with this method.
Remember that DVD was 3-4 years old when the PS2 used it as its format. Using Blu-ray in the PS3 on launch year was incredibly expensive for Sony. Other than some games having to come on more than one disc, was BD really crucial to the PS3 using it as its base format when you look at what it cost Sony to include it at launch?
