The beginning of the end of Playstation 3 delay speculation
Sony has announced that it will roll out Blu-ray movies on May 23 to coincide with the launch of Samsung's Blu-ray disk player.. After seeing the doom and gloom predicted for the Sony Playstation 3 launch by the New York Times over the weekend, it's nice to see some dates on the calendar. And given that most of the delays for the Playstation 3 are laid at the feet of the inclusion of the Blu-ray disk standardization, my money is that the New York Times got their article wrong. Why? Well, if Samsung is launching Blu-ray high-definition disk players with their full feature sets in May, I suspect Sony can probably build a few for its gaming platform too. After all, it created the standard in the first place.
The irony of the story in the Times was that it, like many other publications, noted Microsoft and Intel's backing for Toshiba's HD-DVD format as providing real competition for Blu-ray disks. As we noted last year, Microsoft and Intel currently neither use nor specify HD-DVD drives in their products, and any future use of HD-DVD drives are confined to XBox 360 add-ons (which require that you have an XBox 360, which isn't a big market yet in and of itself) and PC drives under Windows Vista, which won't really have any impact until 2007.
The bottom line: If there's one game Sony knows how to play, it's marketing. Our call on next generation DVDs remains the same as it was last year: Blu-ray is going to win the war because of its huge studio support, and the consortium of consumer electronics companies (not computer firms) support it. If people were hoping Blu-ray was going to hold up the Playstation 3 launch and give Microsoft some breathing room, Sony is on track to dash those hopes this summer.
The irony of the story in the Times was that it, like many other publications, noted Microsoft and Intel's backing for Toshiba's HD-DVD format as providing real competition for Blu-ray disks. As we noted last year, Microsoft and Intel currently neither use nor specify HD-DVD drives in their products, and any future use of HD-DVD drives are confined to XBox 360 add-ons (which require that you have an XBox 360, which isn't a big market yet in and of itself) and PC drives under Windows Vista, which won't really have any impact until 2007.
The bottom line: If there's one game Sony knows how to play, it's marketing. Our call on next generation DVDs remains the same as it was last year: Blu-ray is going to win the war because of its huge studio support, and the consortium of consumer electronics companies (not computer firms) support it. If people were hoping Blu-ray was going to hold up the Playstation 3 launch and give Microsoft some breathing room, Sony is on track to dash those hopes this summer.
Technorati Tags: XBox 360, Analysis, Playstation 3, Sony, Marketing, puppy, Microsoft, Games, Intel, Gaming, Opinion
posted by Carl Howe at
5:10 AM
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