Well, I haven't posted in a long while but all this crap after Jeff's departure was a bit discouraging. At least now there is a compelling development in the industry to talk about. The HD-DVD VS. Blu-ray war is finally over. While I am a Playstation fan, this isn't about how happy I am (I don't really care frankly), but about format wars in general and their meaning in the industry. I've read a bit of economics literature about format wars. Some of it is written alongside what's called "Information Economics" and others are alongside regular game theory. Format wars are actually a pretty interesting to observe and study. After all, there have been quite a few in the last decade.

This one though came so close with the us, gamers that I think it got emotional to an unprecedented level. Did teenagers care about Betamax or VHS back in the 80's. I don't know for sure but, I am inclided to say No. Becuase there weren't as many gamers as there are now.

Anyway, the whole argument about which format is "better" is irrelevant because in the long-run both technologies would have been perfected and probably become same in terms of quality and value. Especially, given that they were both based on the same idea of a blue laser, though I think Blu-ray sounds way cooler than HDDVDVD whatever.

This war was very heavy on strategy. Microsoft, as much as it supported HD-DVD, was strategizing when they didn't put it in X360. I can assure you that if they incorporated HDDVD from the beginning the war would be far from over. And given Xbox's large install base the outcome may have been different. But MS is not a hardware company and there is no reason for it risk more than it should on hardware. Which is precisely what it did. Sony, on other hand IS a hardware manufacturer, which is why it also risked precisely as much as it should, i.e. build it into the PS3. You could see how the preceived stakes got higher and higher towards the end of 2007 as people thought that the war was coming to an end. No faction wanted to bow out. It was so deadlocked that nobody knew what would happen. A classic game theory case of a "Game of Chicken" - two drivers heading on to each other until one person backs away. The moment one player flinches, the game is over. And that is what happened. The preceibved balance between HDDVD and Bluray tipped in favor of Sony and supporters of the other side started dropping like flies.

I heard a lot of people say that this war was pointless beacuse nextgen contnet will be streamed or stored online anyway. I disagree with that simply because I think there will always be a substantial demand for a physical product when it comes to entertainment goods. After all, the whole console gaming market is based on a format war between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.