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So Sony have won the format war for HD TV content distribution. The Blu-ray disk has beaten HD DVD to become the new standard. The first Sony media victory since the Microfloppy of 1982.
But it has cost Sony dear. Difficulties mass producing Blu-ray drives in 2005/6 delayed the PS3 getting to market. And when it did the high cost of the drives compared with DVDs contributed to Sony having to charge a premium price for the console, which stunted sales. These factors may possibly result in Sony coming third in this generation of the console wars. For certain they haven’t dominated like they did in the last generation with PS2. A very high cost to pay.
Meanwhile Microsoft did not build an HD drive into the Xbox 360. This enabled them to get their console to market more quickly and for a lower price. So they have maintained a significant lead over Sony in this generation of console. By having the HD drive as an external add on Microsoft hedged it’s bets. It didn’t bother them or effect them commercially whichever format won. They would just make external drives using whichever format won. And so they will.
Of course none of this has any impact on Nintendo. They, quite literally, are playing a different game.
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Well Brucey boy, that’s really base, it’s disappointing.
Acting by your argument, tons of rival companies would be benefiting off Sony winning. Hell, by your argument, Toshiba might have a little cut of the cheese, they might be manufacturing some parts.
The argument isn’t who is profiting, all companies profit off each other, (like when Sony made all those batteries for Apple, Toshiba, Dell, etc). But I mean, Sony wasn’t jumping up and down every time Apple or Dell sold another laptop saying “YESSS, ANOTHER WIN FOR US”.
The point is, even if Sony are paying Microsoft for the codec, Microsoft’s profits over the codec are going to be nowhere near the profits Sony gets over licensing for games or the such. (Since Sony doesn’t profit over it’s consoles, I declined to say the such). And Microsoft profits are nowhere near what they could have gotten if they HAD won. They would have probably gone and made a built-in HD-DVD player.
And the point is so that… it’s a loss for Microsoft because all the investment Microsoft has put in to developing the HD-DVD for it’s console and backing it has gone to nothing. In it’s most simplest, it’s a loss for Microsoft because they lost.
I mean, would you rather get your profits through ripples made by other companies or directly get profits?
http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/others/0,39037627,62038026,00.htm
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@Montrealien :
I do believe DVD was a fairly new thing back in the good ol’ PS2 days.