Sony CEO Wishing for HD Format Struggles to Be Over

With the extreme sales of HD DVD format players over the last 2 weeks, it seems that Sony CEO Howard Stringer is wishing he had taken a different course.

from Ars Technica

"It’s a difficult fight," Stringer was quoted saying by the Associated Press, going so far as to describe the situation as a "stalemate." He candidly indicated that the war mostly came down to bragging rights over who was winning, and said that the two camps could have collaborated better in the past to develop one format. Stringer even said that he wished he could go back in time to make that possible—is that the smell of regret floating in the air?

Although Blu-ray format is ahead in sales at this time, that will likely change by the years end. For many price is the motivating factor, no matter what the difference in features or quality. The thoughts back to the video tape wars make many of us wonder who will come out on top, as the fight is clearly over price versus quality and feature sets.

Sony lost this one – will it lose the current one? It certainly is possible.

Blu-ray was far ahead in the battle until Toshiba brought out the short-lived HD-A2 model HD DVD player, which was introduced and then gone in less than 2 months. Of course, this is always what happens when a model is built to be introduced at an elevated price, and then slash and burn is used to move massive numbers of units to get the flow started.

ah, HD-A2…we knew ye well! Here and gone in less than a quarter … whirlwind,  even in electronics ‘years’

Then there was the problem with freezing of older design Blu-ray machines, when the very newest features were implemented on the media. This was certainly disheartening to the owners of those players, and eerily comforting to those still sitting on the HD format fence, awaiting the declaration of a winner.

The real sting was the point at which movie studio Paramount decided that dual inventory was not wise, and decided to drop Blu-ray titles from further production.  The Sony CEO does not mention it, but for those new to the game, the fix seemed to be in, with talk of large sums of money changing hands in the decision to drop Blu-ray support.

In the United States, Blu-ray has always led, and until recently, by a large margin, but European customers got on the HD DVD format bandwagon early, as the movie studios there backed that. Blockbuster was also a presence for the adoption of Blu-ray, and now with their own problems, it remains to be seen how much a champion for Blu-ray that company can be.

Sony seems to have been caught completely unaware of the HD DVD player onslaught by Toshiba, as there are no announcements of a killer $250 Blu-ray player, which many talking heads could help stem the tide of customer support. Sony instead, chooses to soldier on with a lower priced, and much less coveted, Play Station 3, with less compatibility for PS2 games, and a smaller hard drive of 40GB.

lots of good features are there to recommend the PS3 as a standalone Blu-ray player, but for many adults, shaking the ‘game console’ identity is hard

More bad news for fence sitters, and eventual losers as well, because the marketing firm Forrester Research predicts that the wars over format will continue well into the year 2009, and adds "if not longer".

It is easy to wish for the companies to order some sort of binding arbitration, with Rodney King at the helm, urging the phrase he is known for, and cooperation between the parties.

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