Wrong. Warner made out like a bandit. They played both sides until they got the highest bid. They knew HDM's fate was theirs, so they kept playing that card going back and forth between both opposing groups for over 4 months.
Warner waited the longest time to go Blu Ray exclu, despite 2007 having been Blu on top -every- single week. Not 60% of the weeks, not 70%, not even 90%, but 100%.
Warner even gave HD DVD (at its own risk and losing money for that) some of its best catalogue titles on exclusive (V..., The Matrix, Batman Begins). As per going Blu due to a payoff (or even because Fox didn't come), those are all rumors, even denied falt out publicly by Warner themselves.
On the other hand, Paramount dropped Blu Ray from one day to the next, on a -publicly admitted- payoff ($150M, eventually admitted as "Commercial promotion deal"), and now we see that they did all that while counting going back to Blu at the first chance they had.
Some even suspect that they were still feeding titles in smaller quantitites to retailers (explaining the odd paramount titles one could sometime find in a retail store).
Now I agree with the OP. Even if Warner played both sides, it appears that Paramount got a big pay off without really facing any consequences, other than a tiny amount of revenue loss from selling on HD-DVD and not on Blu for four months. They even have a whole backload of titles on Blu-ray ready to ship! How can you argue Warner got a better deal?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Big Sam @ Feb 23rd 2008 12:08PM
Paramount made out like a bandit. They played both sides perfectly
John @ Feb 23rd 2008 12:36PM
Wrong. Warner made out like a bandit. They played both sides until they got the highest bid. They knew HDM's fate was theirs, so they kept playing that card going back and forth between both opposing groups for over 4 months.
1stGreg @ Feb 23rd 2008 1:02PM
Actually Big Sam is right John,
Warner waited the longest time to go Blu Ray exclu, despite 2007 having been Blu on top -every- single week.
Not 60% of the weeks, not 70%, not even 90%, but 100%.
Warner even gave HD DVD (at its own risk and losing money for that) some of its best catalogue titles on exclusive (V..., The Matrix, Batman Begins).
As per going Blu due to a payoff (or even because Fox didn't come), those are all rumors, even denied falt out publicly by Warner themselves.
On the other hand, Paramount dropped Blu Ray from one day to the next, on a -publicly admitted- payoff ($150M, eventually admitted as "Commercial promotion deal"), and now we see that they did all that while counting going back to Blu at the first chance they had.
Some even suspect that they were still feeding titles in smaller quantitites to retailers (explaining the odd paramount titles one could sometime find in a retail store).
Sam Winter @ Feb 23rd 2008 6:51PM
Now I agree with the OP. Even if Warner played both sides, it appears that Paramount got a big pay off without really facing any consequences, other than a tiny amount of revenue loss from selling on HD-DVD and not on Blu for four months. They even have a whole backload of titles on Blu-ray ready to ship! How can you argue Warner got a better deal?