PS3's HD-DVD killer title exaggerated

20 Feb 2008 | 08:20 GMT

By Nick Farrell

PUNDITS from the Blu-ray camp have been quick to claim that the adoption of Sony's PS3 is the only reason that the standard won the format war.

Indeed, the "CPU is the brian of the computer" team of hacks at the BBC claim that the inclusion of Blu-ray on the PS3 was the only reason the standard was able to bolster sales figures.

The evidence seems pretty clear Sony claims to have sold 10.5 million PS3 consoles since it was launched in late 2006. Tosh has only sold only one million HD DVD machines.

Now according to Tosh it sold 600,000 players in the US and of these 300,000 were attached to Xbox 360 HD DVD drives. There were 100,000 units were sold in Europe. And about 10,000 players and 20,000 recorders in Japan. So about 730,000 units worldwide.

Even allowing for sales from other hardware suppliers this figure is pretty poor.

But there is something wrong with these figures. At various points in the format war HD-DVD was counted as being the winner. Particularly when price cuts meant that the gear was selling like hot cakes from some of the bigger chain stores. How would that be possible when the PS3 had been out there all that time?

There is another factor here. If games machines really where the big killer application that got Blu-ray installed then why didn't the latter work for HD-DVD. This was a cheap add-on to the Xbox 360, yet most console owners did not think it worth the upgrade.

So if console players were not that interested in using their players to watch high definition video, then it is unlikely that the PS3 was the cause of Blu-ray's success.

It seems to us that the format wars were less about hardware and more about studio backing. Sales figures of movies for Blu-ray and HD-DVD were appalling. From the studio's perspective two formats were pointless and were strangling the development a big money spinner.

If you look at the timeline of announcements. The killer blow to HD-DVD came when Warner Brothers suddenly switched sides. With only Paramount and Universal Studios backing the standard there was simply not enough content going out to justify its existence.

However it is unlikely the studios would move from HD-DVD to Blu-ray because of the PS3. They will only make decisions based on what is mainstream. PS3 sales have been slow, thanks to Sony's pricing, and have only recently been picking up. Even then the gear is only sold to a small number of a movie studio's target market.

Many analysts had seen Warner as being neutral in the format war as it produced both HD-DVD and Blu-ray content. It was also one of the biggest suppliers making up abut 30 per cent of the market.

The only problem is that Warner have not ever explained the reason for its sudden conversion. It simply said that consumers had chosen the format and any confusion in the market was stalling sales of the format . But the sales figures of both formats were too low to make that call. Particularly as HD-DVD machines were as cheap as chips and therefore likely to have a longer term impact on the market.

It is more likely that Warner felt that it needed to play Kingmaker to one particular standard. It looked at Sony, which after all is a studio like itself, realised that it was not going to give up. Going for Blu-ray was not going to cost it much but was going to unify the market behind one standard totally. µ

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007