It took over five years for DVD to unseat VHS, and it eventually happened not because the players or the films were cheaper, but because retailers pushed VHS out of the market. The same thing has happened with CRT televisions, and the same thing will eventually happen with DVDs.

If retailers are having to resort to preowned games to shore up their profits, why are they going to do anything to keep virtually marginless DVDs around? Increasingly extravagant box-sets have given DVDs a seasonal stay of execution, but the piles of heavily discounted stock that clutter the shelves come January suggest that even this strategy has been milked to death.

You (or rather the source article you’re taking at face value) also neglect to mention that movie downloads are typically rentals, not purchases. The studios have no interest in killing the golden goose of premium disc-based distribution either.

Elsewhere we’ve got the usual premature writing-off of the PS3, made the more ridiculous when a PS3 exclusive (Killzone 2) is at the top of the UK all-formats chart (and another – Yakuza 3 – tops the Japanese chart), and a recent major multiplatform release (Street Fighter IV) has seen the majority of sales on the platform.

Somehow Sony have sold 2m PS3s in the UK and 20m worldwide (while the machine has been uncompetitively priced); every multiplatform title of any note now ships simultaneously on the PS3 and 360. All the publishers seem to have figured out that the machine is here to stay, what do you know that they don’t?

The only thing that worries me is the idea that publishers are focusing on less releases, but bigger and better games…as THQ have stated today. On one side, you can see why to maximise profit …but it sounds a bit like “making bigger eggs and keeping them in less baskets”.