Gartner says Blu-ray will win the next-generation DVD battle, despite price cuts by Toshiba on its HD DVD players in the US earlier this month. The research firm said Toshiba's move may prove to be "useless resistance", with five of the seven major Hollywood studios now backing Blu-ray Disc exclusively, while the HD DVD camp has just two - Paramount and Universal.
Toshiba's price cuts came after a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros, announced it would shift from producing in both formats to just Blu-ray alone, expanding the disc format's advantage in the number of movies and other content.
"Gartner believes that Toshiba's price-cutting may prolong HD DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format. Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over, wrote analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
Toshiba announced price cuts on its HD DVD players in the US on January 15, just weeks after losing Warner Bros. The company will cut the price of its HD-A3 player in half, to $149.99 from $299.99, while its higher end models, the HD-A30 and HD-A35 are now listed for $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Toshiba pledged to keep up the fight against Blu-ray Disc during a press conference at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, despite numerous media reports and analyst comments pronouncing Blu-ray Disc the winner of the format battle. The Japanese company still has some powerful allies in HD DVD, including Microsoft, which sells an add-on HD DVD player for the Xbox 360.
Should HD DVD lose the format war, Microsoft will have to start using Blu-ray Disc on the Xbox 360 in order to allow users to play high definition video games. It's not an outcome the US company would likely want to see. Blu-ray Disc was developed by Sony and is an integral part of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console, a rival to the Xbox 360.
The addition of the high definition drives to the two game consoles has given game makers a new way to add content to their digital games, because both formats have far more storage capacity than traditional DVDs.
At the Taipei Game Show 2008 on Friday, Sony showed off a range of games created using Blu-ray optical discs. Over 100 game titles have already been published in Blu-ray Disc, said Sakura Wang, a marketing manager at Sony Computer Entertainment in Taiwan.
Comments
Nick said: More baseless speculations about Blu-Ray beating out HD DVD Its so laughable its such a ridiculous non-factual claim I really hope people dont believe this junk talk When will Sony amp the BAD STOP paying off news sites amp articleblog writers to write about baseless negativity toward HD DVD Too much junk talk is going on lately ever since the Warner Payoff to go Blu-Ray exclusive Good for Warner now they can help accelerate Blu-Ray into less than a niche format The only hopes Hi Def Media has is HD DVD Period Without it HDM is dead in the waterThe DVD Forum is not stupid enough to let a Sony Format succeed SD DVD No in 1000 years HD DVD was meant to replace SD DVD so its HD DVD or SD DVD that will be the victor in this War not Blu
Jimmy TWO Teeth said: What Tripe There are no games made for the 360 Produced on HD DVD