Sony Finally Wins A Format War

Sony always seems to find themselves embroiled in some sort of format war. In the neverending quest to make money, rather than just go with the flow and attempt to perfect already existing technology, they insist on "innovating" their own technology. This has never worked.

They were on the losing side of VHS v. Beta. Their MiniDisc got killed by CDs. The rest of the world uses the MP3 encoding format, while Sony insists on using ATRAC. The only people who use their Memory Stick flash memory are those dumb enough to have purchased a Sony product that requires them (Hello, PSP owners!). The only format which they were able to dominate with was Hi8, only because no one made a comparable product. But even Hi8 has almost been run out of town by MiniDV, which isn't even the same technology, but when was the last time you saw someone rockin' the Hi8?

And it all appeared to be happening once again when Toshiba decided to come out against Sony's Blu-ray in HD video with the HD DVD. The HD DVD was cheaper to produce, the players were cheaper, and the format got to market first. It appeared as though Sony was going to lose again.

But then Sony did the smartest thing they've done in a long time: they included a Blu-ray player with the PS3, essentially flooding homes with their disc's player. Although stand-alone HD DVD players outsold Blu-ray players, it couldn't compete with the fact that everyone that owned a PS3 (seven million and counting) has a Blu-ray player in their home.

A real backbreaker came when Warner Bros., the world's largest video distributor and the only major distributor to back both formats, claimed it would distribute only in Blu-ray going forward. The largest retail and rental chains (Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, respectively) had already made this switch. Things were looking even better for Sony.

And then Toshiba dropped their cards on the table, and came out with the announcement that they were no longer going to produce the HD DVD player, a machine they had invented to play their format. Paramount, which was distributing in solely in HD DVD, immediately switched sides. Microsoft, an HD DVD supporter from Day One, stopped production of their HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360.

Roughly, within one week, HD DVD was essentially dead (although it still roams the earth in zombie form). Sony wins by default.

Congrats, Sony; well done. Now that you've got this one sewn up, you should probably get to developing that next format that's going to be a laughingstock in five years. You're so good at it. I know you can do it.