Its a legitimate question, especially after the reviews hit today that HDDVD is on the upward slope and bluray is on the downward spiral. With 50% more positive reviews of hddvd than bluray, and with hddvd gaining sales grown on movie sales as well as the cost point difference… Its no wonder HDTVUK (via techdigest.tv) are saying it wouldnt be suprising if Bluray went the way of many older sony led formats… “betamax, minidisc, umd and atrac” that were all failures in the end… not to mention memorystick (duo) that is basically a failure in its own right thats still trying to hang around even though its been trampled by its competition.
The question i pose is with the bad revies of bluray and all the bad sony press, how long is it before studios start to jump ship over to hddvd? I know its too early to declare a winner but with sonys track record and the current state of things, from consumer and retail reviews, and the bad PS3 launch and horrible press surrounding that, the question of when studios will jump seems a legitimate one.
The other big question is the one from the title of this little article… is Sony in trouble? From what i recall, analysts have basically said sony has placed all its eggs in 2 very fragile baskets, the ps3 and bluray, and with both products having extremely hard and expensive launches, and with both having horrible press and reviews. Is sony in trouble if things dont turn completely around?
Yes hardware gets cheaper over time, for both the ps3 and the bluray, but with lower launch pricepoints, the 360 and hddvd stand to drop to the magic 100-200$ price range alot sooner than the sony counterparts.
In my humble view it just really looks like Sony is taking a beating on its 2 main fronts, and it just happens that from what i understand those 2 fronts if not a wopping success could spell disaster for sony. And with the Xbox360 in far greater numbers on the market, and with game and reviews both placing it ahead of the ps3, and the same being true for toshiba and hddvd vs the bluray. Its a scary time to be sony if you ask me.
Yes the PS3 was to drive bluray adoption, but it was a forced bundle that might end up hurting sony, especially with Microsoft/Toshiba launching the HDDVD addon that works with PC’s and 360′s and is portable between the 2 for almost chump change well inside the impulse buy market.
What do you guys think?
