Sony Shouts Falsities Over Blu-Ray Win

Sustainability is the key. A burst in sales in one month is not enough reason to put out propaganda.

Today, Sony is claiming that Blu-Ray has won the format war. I call ‘bullshit’ and ‘propaganda’.

Sony says that because Blu-Ray outsold HD-DVD in January, their Blu format has won. They also point out that more movies were released that month on the BD format than on Toshiba’s HD-DVD. What they don’t point out is that HD-DVD has been in the market for longer, and therefor has a more consistent release stream.

At first glance, however, this does appear fairly rosy for Blu-Ray. However, HD movies are mainly sold to geeks and geeks like us love novelties. Geeks also like PlayStation 3’s. It just so happens that the PS3 has a Blu-Ray player built in as standard, which means people buying PS3’s are likely to stick a Blu-Ray title on top of their PS3 box as it’s going through the checkout. If you’re going to spend $600 on a console, you might as well throw an HD movie in too.

The key to winning this “war” is sustainability, not the ability to have a burst of sales when your new toy arrives in the shops. As I’ve previously written, HD-DVD has several fundamental market-winning advantages under its hood, many of which are crucial to either format’s success.

However, this whole argument goes for Toshiba too; they are not free to claim their format wins when their $200 Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive has a burst of sales, prompting a burst of HD-DVD movie sales. A winner will take months of consistently high-and-rising sales to succeed over the other format.

My advice: buy neither, wait for HD on-demand. It’s where it’s at!

Would you believe me if I said I actually prefer the Blu-Ray format myself?