Sony’s Blu-ray Wins Format War

In the battle of high-definition DVDs, Sony’s Blu-ray technology beat out Toshiba’s HD DVD format, and yesterday, it became official when Toshiba announced it was halting production of its players. In admitting defeat, Toshiba has done what few companies ever do well, cut its losses. This is the first time Sony has won a format war in three tries.

Uniform standards matter a great deal in electronics. Without them, consumers are reluctant to spend money on gadgets. After all, who wants to buy a $400 device that may or may not be able to play the latest movie or song? When they have a uniform standard, shoppers tend to leap in with both feet.

For Sony, the key was the Play Station 3, which can play Blu-ray discs. Despite lagging the Microsoft Xbox by over a year, and despite getting overwhelmed by Nintendo’s Wii, the 10 million PS3s sold worldwide dwarfed the HD DVD sales, which amounted to only 1 million at the end of 2007. The PS3 gave Sony the platform to carry the day.

HD DVD will continue in the Xbox as an external add-on, and it will still be on laptop and desktop computers, at least for now. Microsoft doesn’t seem worried by Toshiba’s decision, “It is games that sell the consoles and the Xbox has the largest next-gen games library,” a company spokesman said. Microsoft also issued a statement that read in part, “we do know from market data that HD movie playback is not a primary purchase driver for consumers buying video game consoles.”

The last two times Sony was involved in a format clash it came out the loser. Sony’s Betamax lost out to VHS in the videotape wars of the 1980s. It also lost the high density optical storage format battle. Sony and partner Phillips offered the MMCD (Multi-Media Compact Disc) format while the SD (Super Density) was adopted in the 1990s. This time, Sony wins, and the world can go out and buy Blu-ray players confident that the next Jackass movie will be just as dumb in high definition.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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