As we poked and prodded through the
ups and downs of the format war, we noticed a recurring theme -- HD DVD seemed to have things going
in its favor on more than one occasion. Consumers adored the low priced hardware, studios were coming
on board and Sony's PlayStation 3 (along with all the other Blu-ray players) was priced extraordinarily high. Not to mention Sony's absolutely
awful track record with
formats. In a recent interview with ABI Principal Analyst Steve Wilson,
BetaNews found that he believed that the outcome of the format war wouldn't necessarily benefit the consumer. Besides being more expensive and less developed, some Blu-ray players have had
quite the time performing as advertised. According to ABI, "it wasn't customers' likes or dislikes that powered the fatal blow in the format war, it was Warner Bros.'
decision to switch allegiance to Blu-ray, along with subsequent moves to dump HD DVD by major retailers such as
Wal-Mart,
Netflix and
Blockbuster." Frankly, we can't argue with that one iota.
[Thanks, Andrew]