It does seem obvious that if HD-DVD hadn't come on the market, Sony would have preferred to wait another year or two to bring BD to market.

BD video maybe. Sony probably would've still included BD in the PS3. And of course, if Toshiba hadn't had a competing spec, BD would've been named HD-DVD.

Where do you come up with this nonsense? Just because the DVD Forum chose AOD as its next generation format does not even remotely suggest that BD would have been chosen in AOD's absence by mere virtue of BD's existence.

And if Sony hadn't had a competing spec, we wouldn't be having this war, we'd simply all be enjoying HD DVD, most likely from all manufacturers and studios.

Considering that no other companies brought any kind of technology to bear when BD and AOD were duking it out, yes, I think it's safe to assume that if the DVD Forum had gone the other way, we'd be saying, "Man, HD DVD really sucks, but these AOD discs rock!"

His point was that BD would have been the automatic successor to DVD, when everything I've read about the DVD Forum's reticence about accepting that format indicates otherwise. Had there not been two competing technologies, we probably would've wound up with some hybrid of the two as they are today.

Well, in the end, we can play the "What if" game all day. Let's just be thankful Toshiba DID have a competing technology.

Your quote is fixed. At least have the decency to complain about me with accuracy.

Once again you confuse the format with the machine. This isn't that hard, why can't you get it??

But anyway, I wasn't referring to HDDVD or the A1 in that post. Read the post I quoted for understanding.

I suppose so.

The DVD Forum never voted on BD, simply because it was never submitted to the DVD Forum for consideration. But then I assume part of the reason for the new organisation is so the top CE companies can take a larger slice of the pie for themselves in this new venture, instead of having to share royalties with all the little fish who've not invested anything in making it work...

Anyhow, what about them Fox titles, huh?

Very good news for the Blu-Ray camp.

Now, if they'd only get a player worth a shit on the market!

I'm gonna laugh my A$$ OFF if Blitz doesn't get a PS3 on launch date.

Blitz, I stood in line for 12 hours to get an xbox 360, are you willing to do the same for PS3? Are you ready for $80 game titles? Are you getting the HDMI version?

360 games cost $80?

No they are between $50-60 brand new. The rumor is that the sony games are gonna be more expensive than the 360 games. Which would make a bit of sense because they are on BD discs. But, im not sure if its true.

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=62615

Jim Armour, Toshiba: Yeah, it's an evolution, and we're quite happy with that. A lot of this "format war", in inverted commas, is politics. Patents and licenses are a good way to make money. Sony, however, does like to be pretty exclusive on the patents and licenses they have, they've made a damn good living off that for the past 30 years or so. The DVD Forum does not actually give them a lot of opportunity to make the kind of exclusive license money that they'd like to. So, of course they have to go out and make a completely new format.

Both formats were proposed to the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum actually did choose AOD - which is the Toshiba name for ...
DVDTimes: ...for what became HD DVD.
Jim Armour, Toshiba: Both were proposed, but AOD - the Advanced Optical Disc - was accepted, and it's now HD DVD.
DVDTimes: That's interesting - I must have been wrong then, because I read somewhere else that Sony didn't even submit Blu-ray to the DVD Forum.
Jim Armour, Toshiba: They did. Basically, with the DVD Forum - we don't own everything on HD DVD. [...] As far as the media format is concerned, we don't really have any licenses on that. I think we do on the error correction, or something. We only have lisenses on certain parts of hardware, and of course the video codec which is being used. Blu-ray is now using AVC as well, and they'll have to pay licenses on that too. As far as physical formats are concerned, the spacing, the writing method, and things like that, Sony basically wants everything under Sony. The DVD Forum would not accept that. "Not proposed" - not necessarily. If they got at least 40% of the patents pushed through, they'd be doing fine thank-you-very-much.

The DVD forum did not vote on BD. This has even been stated by Amir on AVS, with the caveat that it wouldn't have received enough votes. I'm unsure why the Toshiba engineer made this mistake. Then again his contention that Sony will own all the patents on BD (when it's been widely reported that Panasonic and Philips have a large share - Matsushita possibly the lion's share) doesn't lend credibility to his comments.

I don't think so. If they are willing to lose $300 a console to try to keep it competitive, they will subsidize the game costs to keep them in line with 360 games. At least through the holiday, I would guess. Even then, I would be surprised if they went beyond that.

Well, I dont know how the game costs work, but alot of that profit would be going to software companies and not Sony (unlike the players)...right??

If so, I doubt they would be willing to lose money on their product. So, if your right, it must be coming completely out of Sony's end.

The potential added cost for next gen games comes from the vastly inflated budgets for these titles, not the tiny additional cost per disc replicated. I believe Alex Millians posted a worst case scenario a year back for BD25 replication which had each disc costing about $0.40 more to make than a DVD9. That doesn't add $20 to the cost of a game.

Your absolutely right, BUT it gives them an excuse to charge more. Thats my point.

Sony makes the discs and licenses the tech. They would cut that if necessary to be in line with the 360, I think.

The whole point of subsidizing the price of the console is to make up the profit in software sales. If they're planning to lose money on both the console and the software, where are they going to make money?

It's like that old SNL Change Bank skit:

"Our customers ask us, 'How do you make money doing this?' The answer is simple: Volume."

This is only a problem if the BD25 require substantial subsidization, and if they don't become more economic in a decent time frame - say, 2 years. Neither is very likely an issue.