um, are you saying that Sony wanting blu ray to be successful is the same as Microsoft pushing hd dvd just so blu ray wouldn't be successful, or successful quickly?

They did indeed, but DVD had several major advantages over VHS that Blu-Ray does not have over DVD. The movies were cheaper, the playback experience was a major improvement over the predecessor, (chapters, subtitles, languages, extras, etc. for the epic win), and, yes, the AV quality was improved. While Blu-Ray isn't a step back from DVD in anything other than price, the only real advantage it has over DVD is AV quality, and especially in terms of audio the jump isn't big enough for many people to care about.

Ultimately, I believe this will prevent Blu-Ray from overtaking DVD for the same reason Laserdisc failed to overtake VHS. Laserdisc actually had many of the experience-wise advantages over DVD that VHS does, but by itself that wasn't enough: the video quality wasn't much improved and the price was much worse. Blu-Ray has a similar problem: while its AV quality is higher, the experience isn't much improved and the price is, again, worse. Beta was similar, as was Minidisc. Of the three real advantages a media format can have over its predecessor, it doesn't seem like you can win with only one.

Yeah, like the CD...

The CD wasn't Sony's.

See, comments like this are why I wouldn't touch Microsoft's stock with a ten foot pole. It's not just that they're clunky, unimaginative monopolists who foist overpriced bloatware on PC consumers, which I can forgive. It's that they're so $%^#ing petty and nasty - the sign of small, provincial minds.

BluRay is already a wild success, and going to be even more successful, as tons of movies get rolled out and prices drop to affordable levels, and HDTV is here to stay. So why is MS so hot under the collar? Microsoft has profit margins of 20% and rakes in $15 billion in pure profit each year. Why sneer at Sony? Why bash the Nintendo Wii? What's with these MS executives, do they have nothing better to do with their time than drink their own Koolaid?

There's only one conclusion: by bashing the deserved success of their competitors, they're really bashing us, the consumers. Because MS doesn't want to learn from their mistakes, or understand the workings of the media market. They're a fat, complacent, lazy and brainless monopoly, who think they know what consumers want better than we do ourselves. Until they start showing us consumers some respect, they will have zero chance of dislodging Sony and Nintendo at the top of the charts.

The guy is a tool! I love it when he was on the Bonus Round and Geoff pwned his ass with questions about the Live service :P

Sorry but Blu Ray is here to stay.

The next xbox is not being designed with brd in mind, imho. M$ is filled with talented people with knowledge of the industry...I'll bet on them going with USB flash memory...it's cheap and in 3-4 years, you'll be able to get 30-40 gb for pennies on the dollar...a usb 2.0 port is pretty fast to boot.

It was developed by Philips, Sony, and others, much like Blu-Ray was developed by Matsushita, Sony, and others.  Sony had a heavy hand in both, but by no means was the sole creator of either, which is my point.

Matsushita (Panasonic) holds more patents in Blu-Ray tech than Sony, actually.

I'm saying that both were plan from the companies, bobobologna suggested that people should hate MS because they used the HD-DVD to delay the Blu-Ray adoption, so i if that the case people should hate Sony because they used the PS3 to make faster the Blu-Ray adoption.

At least to me, there's a difference between a company releasing a product they know will fail and advocating its purchase than and one releasing a product and hoping that it'll succeed in whatever market it's in. Still, I don't consider it any worse than Sega releasing that 32X. I have like 4 games for it.