A viewpoint that is wrong... I may as well say Lays potato chips are a Sony product.

Sure, Microsoft was funding HD-DVD, for no real benefit to themselves.

If you consider 'keeping an aggressive Sony at bay' no real benefit.

Regardless...  some things to know about Blu-ray and Sony profitability.

1) Sony owns LESS then 30% of the IP. 

but not less than 25%

2) The Blu-ray Assosiation wasn't collecting too many royalties until 2008... after Februrary some time.

3) Blu-ray is not expected to be as profitable as DVD... due to digital distribution, China's own HD format (you'd be surprised just how up it is on Blu-ray despite being released later) and a number of other reasons.

 http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9874317-7.html

4) Blu-ray royalties are not $30 dollars for a player anymore.  They are 23.75.

4) Blu-ray royalties are expected to plunge in prices.  Quicker then DVDs ever did... why?  See number 3.

They are plunging 40% per drive.  So now each drive will be... $9.50 per drive... actually cheaper then the $12.  DVD was making... last year!

http://www.myce.com/news/Blu-ray-prices-to-fall-as-patent-holders-simplify-licensing-15591/?utm_source=cdfreaks&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email_newsletter_activestories_week

Anyways, you should do some more research on what kinds of fees are required to sell BR-paraphenelia.

I don't have any concrete numbers, because I can't seem to find how many drives/standalones exist, and I can't find exactly how many BR titles exist.

However, there is a 30k$ fee per title for commercial distribution.

can you explain?

@bdbdbd

What do you mean? Just look at Sonys financial reports in the last two quarters show that they would have been profitable if not for exchange rate. It could go as high as 4 quarters back or more.

2005 - 08 are easily explained by taking losses for the ps3 and increased competition on all sectors

Also, looking at the yearly exchange rates, in 2002, it was 130+ yen per dollar.

By 2005, that was 105 yen per dollar. After that, it increased in 2006 and 07 (where losses are explained by 850$ ps3 price tag).

08 saw a drop from 120 down to 112, and this year saw a drop from 112 to 89.

So, compared to the ps2 in 2002 (one of ps2s biggest years), they are making 40 yen less per dollar. From 130 to 90.

When Sony was taking huge losses, the exchange rate was good, when Sony was bringing in huge revenue, exchange rate was bad. It all balances out, but speaking more recently, exchange rate is the #1 enemy.

A agressive Sony at bay... from what?

From profit. They are in a console war dude! The best thing to do is hinder your opponent at every turn.

The console wars?  If so, that in of itself shows how more valuable Microsoft sees consoles then format wars.

Afterall, Microsoft does get a cut of Blu-ray royalties.

However, they got a much bigger cut on HDDVD royalties, which is another reason that I should have mentioned earlier.

As for the 30K fee per title for commerical distribution... that seems pertty inconsequential honestly.  For each movie sold, you can pay one middleground employee.  Care to provide a link for that though?

Again, I'd like to know what middleground employees you think exist in the BDA. I asked someone the same thing above and nobody knows. Collectively, the BDA is an association made up of several companies.

It's all written above, all links are there. It's from BDA licensing terms website.

Not counting the fact that Sony owns a number of movie companies and probably has to pay some of that money back into the pot.

Of course they do, just like any other company. It's no more burden for them than it is for anyone else.

Which is by the way, a reason PS3 didn't need blu-ray.  I mean, Sony owns a large percentage of hollywood.

This doesn't make sense. They own a small portion of hollywood, and HDDVD had lots of studios backing it at the time. Keep in mind that BR came out over a year after HDDVD was already making movies and had support. Up to 75% of BR players were PS3s back in the day. And BR install base was just slightly bigger than HDDVD. Without PS3 BR would have died.

I used to be a member of DVDtown, so I've heard all the arguments before. BR needed PS3, and BR is not only profitable, but viable; end of story.

When you think DVD.  Do you think Toshiba, When you thin CD... do you think.. I don't even know.  Floppy disc drives?  Anyone.

Did a bunch of people buy into HD-DVD because it was from the people who made DVD? 

While the Playstation 2's success had a lot to do with the Playstation 1's success... near it's release Dreamcast sales had trouble because of PS2 anticipation.   The reason the Playstation 3 has done as well as it has is the Playstation 2.  Had Nintendo made the PS3, it would of sold worse, no doubt.

The Playstation 3's general failure in the market will carry over to the PS4... at least, initially... if the effect is significant it will carry on to PS5 as well.

Just how N64's failure carried on to Gamecube, and would of carried on to Wii had the Wii been more conevntional.

Well to be fair the PS4 and 5 might not be conventional either, so who knows how things will turn out.