PS3 was driving force behind Blu-ray win

Tag: Blu-ray

This year has seen the death of one high definition format in HD DVD, and the emergence of another in Blu-Ray, as the format of the future, at least for the time being. It’s long been thought that the Playstation 3 having a Blu-ray drive built-in was one of the reasons for this win, and research has now shown how much of a trojan horse the Sony console proved to be.

Almost every single one of you will know that the high-definition format war is well and truly over now, with Toshiba holding the white flag up to Sony way back in February. So, Blu-ray won out, and HD DVD is no more, although there are a few people strangely still fighting for the future of the format.

The Entertainment Merchants Association has recently issued its annual report, which looks at trends happening in television, home video and video games over the course of the last year. One of the most revealing segments of the report is the part which states that the Playstation 3 “is the primary driver behind Blu-Ray sales, with 87% of PS3 owners watching Blu-Ray movies on their console.”

As PSX Extreme states, this is the same organisation which called Blu-Ray the losing format back in 2006, but it now seems they have had an obvious change of heart seeing as Blu-ray is the only format left. The EMA also makes a prediction in the report over the future growth of Blu-ray, and the PS3 again plays a major part.

This raises the question of what would have happened if Sony hadn’t decided to use the PS3 as a trojan horse to get Blu-ray in to people’s homes? Or what would have happened if Microsoft HAD put an HD DVD drive in to the Xbox 360, instead of selling it as an add-on?

It’s reported that 316,000 HD DVD add-ons for the Xbox 360 were sold before HD DVD was declared dead, but when compared to the 3 million Playstation 3 consoles sold up to end of 2007, Toshiba’s format didn’t really stand a chance.

I think Blu-ray will continue its inevitable climb to be the number one movie format, although prices of both the players, and discs themselves will have to drop before DVD gets completely killed off. By which time, digital downloads will be a much cheaper, and more viable option for many.