Sony : We're on top of our game, we are one hell of a hardware designer/manufacturer, there's a big chance of success along a great risk with Blu-ray. We'll take the risk, if we can't do it now, then when?

Microsoft: Damn we're hurting, we just had to put down our first gaming console after just 4 years. We are not good hardware designers/manufacturers, let's play it safe and hope for the best by launching another console as soon as possible. Let's not take unnecessary risks, let's go with good 'ol cheap DVD.

 Years later:

Blu-ray wins format war and RRoD burns millions of X360s.

 Sony: Well, what do you know!

Microsoft: Well, what do you know!

I'm about to get a PS3, so I'll I won't make a statement on whether or not the video quality is enough to make the average consumer upgrade until after I've seen some BluRay Movies, but I do think that BluRay will have a much harder time being adopted by the average consumer than DVD, simply because the upgrade from VHS to DVD included a lot more advantages to the normal consumer than just improved video quality, like:

1) Media size, compared to VHS, the DVD is much much smaller. This is a huge benefit to the amount of room needed to store a collection. I remember some of my friends parents had entire bookcases filled with VHS's, upgrading to DVD freed up a lot more space in an apartment or house.

2) Scene Selection, remember when you wanted to skip to the end of a movie, or trying to find a specific scene? Remember fast-forwarding for 5 minutes, 10 minutes? Remember being charged $2 from blockbuster for not rewinding the movie before you returned it? Yes, this was an actual issue, towards the end of VHS, movie rewinders were even being sold because of VHS players that had lost the ability to rewind.

3) Bonus features - With VHS, you got the movie, and some theatrical trailers. With DVD, you got the movie, trailers, plus you could watch it in french, english, spanish, or whatever. You also could watch the movie with the developer commentary, watch deleted scenes, and other bonus features. Yea!

4) No more tapes eaten by the VCR, anyone who's ever had to buy a rental know's what I'm talking about here.


I can't think of any others, but the only extra I can think of from BluRay that would fit into this category is:

1) Scratched DVDs - Remember loaning your favorite movie or game to your best friend, and when you got it back it's only usefulness was as a coaster due to scratches, well no more with BluRay. The less orderly can leave their DVD collection all over the living rooms now with nary a care, and still have it play fine when they finally do watch it.


One more reason I can think of is anecdotal, but is usually my barometer of the casual market. When DVD launched, for most people in my family (parents, granparents, etc..), it wasn't a question of IF they'd buy a DVD player, but WHEN. I still have yet to hear anyone in my family even mention bluray, even though they all own HDTV's (and HD cable).

Well, I am planning on buying an HD console to go with my HDTV, and blu-ray and RROD has really made me think twice about getting a 360... so I am willing to guess that blu-ray is probably swaying a few 360 buyers, and is helping the PS3 the same was movies/music helps the PSP... some people buy it as a media player, with gaming as a "bonus" function.

I'm definitely buying Transformers on blu-ray. Since hd-dvd is dead i'll probably pick up one of those players and transformers for that too since it'll be a part of history (LOL) at all the people downplaying it like they won't be buying blu-ray someday.

VGChartz would become a desert!!!     

@Rocketpig

The format war would have almost certainly turned out a lot different had the X360 had an HD drive. Remember, a lot of big movie studios were Hd exclusive while the format war was happening.

^^

This is a good point in favour of Sony and against MS: both PS3 and XBox360 costed a lot and, given also the fiery competition and dominance by Nintendo, they'll need a lifecycle at least 6 years long market to repay adequately investments (*), so long-sightedness will definitely pay, a well equipped console will stand better the test of time.

(*) XBox360 is producing profit, but to repay initial investments, in the best case scenario of high attach rates for games and premium services, it will need to sell at least 35 million units, 5 years to reach this goal, given the current and past sales, should be quite likely, add at least another year to increase HW, SW and services sales and have decent profits instead of simply breaking even.

i dont know abt the blueray sales, i only know my MGS4 would be in great trouble if Sony didnt push the blueray drive on the ps3. when KOjima was making the game he claimed even one 50GB blue ray disc is not enough for the game

Personally I'm of the opinion that it makes sense to move to a newer and larger format if the previous format is already obsolete (as in most games require more than one disc) or the additional cost of the newer format is not noticeably higher than the previous format; neither of these things will (really) be true until 2010-2011 which (as you said) is probably when all the companies will start moving their strategies towards "Next Generation" consoles.

Sony is actually lucky because retailers and movie studios are going to push Blu-Ray as much or more as Sony will because it means higher profit margins for them since the DVD market has not been growing. They can let the companies at every other stage of production help them out since it is mutually beneficial.