Something interesting crossed my mind after reading about the cutback launch of the ps3, as well as the seemingly forced release in the US and Japan, of a measly 500k total units. I believe they are doing this just to “say” they launched in 2006, because even with 1.5million at launch with ramped up shipping the 360 was heavily critisized for it’s launch and now Sony plans to Launch with 1/3rd the units that Microsoft launched with?
Something else seems to be a nasty problem and that relates back to the Media War, and how this delay is actually going to effect the war between Bluray and HDDVD. Currently according to wikipedia HDDVD already has around twice the number of movies on disc and twice the number “coming soon” as bluray (With blurays studio support i don’t understand why but thats the fact) the librarys at stores will have a good deal of HiDef DVD’s and a lower number of blurays.
On top of this at the last check hardware sales for the HDDVD camp were also well ahead of it’s bluray competitor. The solution to this was to be the ps3, it was supposed to penitrate households globally this christmas and spread bluray players into everyones household. But with this new delay something has come to light. The european launch will mean that the cheapest solution would be a HDDVD addon that is shipping this christmas for the 360 since the 360 will be in ready supply throughout Europe and I’m betting that Microsoft will really push to get the HDDVD drives into the market as fast and large scale as possible.
The same holds through for the USA, USA is Microsofts breading ground and with so many 360′s sold, if we’re looking from a movie perspective, it’s gonna be a hard to find PS3 for 600$ or a ~200$ upgrade accessory for the 360.
In my Opinion this delay might have really been the saving grace for HDDVD.
