How Format War was Won

Chris Kruger

According to ITP news Sony's Blu-ray won the High Definition format war largely because it was in a better position to provide content to users.

After having lost several format wars in the past it's a wonder that Sony was so eager to enter the fray yet again. With Blu-ray they must have really felt they got it right. With hardware vendors Sony, Hewlett Packard and Apple on board along side some of the largest content providers in the entertainment business Sony has finally managed to emerge the victor from a format war.

Blu-ray was already largely technologically superior to the competing HD-DVD format, but the cost to manufacture drives and media was a distinct downside to it's adoption. One of Sony's more obvious strategies was to boy the Blu-ray market by offering the PS3 as somewhat of a loss leader. It has given customers access to Blu-ray technology at less than the going market price for a player, and had the added benefit of being a games console as well. With the format war won, PS3 sales continue to grow as customers no longer see that buying 'Blu-ray' is a potential risk.

Microsoft recently made a statement to the effect that HD content delivered via removable media is shortly to go the way of the dinosaurs. This may reflect Microsoft's long term hopes but analysts have pointed out that the gap between HD display adoption and access to on-demand HD content delivery is still large enough to warrant success for HD entertainment distributed on removable media.