This decision only serves to prolong the format war, by still giving HD-DVD a lifeline, by doing that they will never allow HDM to achieve minimal mainstream acceptance, therefore they are sacrificing the likelihood of a standard being developed.
That standard could have been a unified format. That disappeared because Toshiba did not want to cede its disc structure back in May 2005. HD-DVD's chance at becoming that standard disappeared with it, since a BD drive was announced for PS3 back in 2004 and confirmed in 2005. The PS3 is never going away, even doing the numbers it is today it will sell 20million units guaranteed over its lifetime. Toshiba even realised this eventuality as referenced by the conciliatory tone of their top brass around the time. Then Microsoft stepped up to play spoiler. (
Link)
A software market generates more revenue for content makers if there is a common standard. For the consumer, internal competition between hardware makers and content providers will serve to reduce prices in the long-run. A format war is simply detrimental to the establishment of a new market and destructive to the CE business model. There is always a balance between consumer and producer surplus.
I do wish Matsushita-san never sold his part of Universal. This crap would have long since been over in 2005 had that been the case.
Personally I was looking forward to Transformers on Blu-ray. I'm not buying a player for that one movie though.
Given comments by Paramount executives that they didn't think either format would ever become a standard it does make sense that they took the money. However what doesn't make sense is the belief there will be a new disc standard to come in and replace these two when they die. There won't be. Not for a long long time. This is why if Blu-ray fails at achieving 90:10 then the idea of a HD optical standard for the next decade disappears.
Glad to see Mr. Spielberg wasn't bribed.
