Warner Bros announced late last night that as off the first of May 2008 they are going to be going Blu-Ray exclusive.
According to their press release.
We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers
Warner Bros has always been Hollywood’s biggest seller of DVD’s, cornering 18%-20% of the entire market.
This is obviously a huge, if not winning, move by the Blu-Ray alliance and hopefully it is the beginning of the end of the format war.
Oh and not to forget I posted about possibly happening in November last year 🙂
Last Updated: January 5, 2008
JP
January 5, 2008 at 11:59
This is so not good.
ocelot
January 5, 2008 at 15:06
Looks like the HD DVD Promotional Group canceled an event that was supposed to take place at CES after this announcement.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9840891-7.html
Fred
January 5, 2008 at 21:17
At last the format war seems to be over , now if we can just get these hd movies to rent somewhere…..
boredhousewife
January 5, 2008 at 23:17
In 2004 the EU brought charges against MS for anti-competitive behaviour. The main complaint was because MS included a Media Player with their OS to the detriment of third part media players – and the net result was that MS were forced to release a version of XP without a media player.
If Sony Entertainment refuses to release its IP on a rival media format and exclusively promotes a format developed by a sister co (Electronics Division) – does that not constitute anti competitive behaviour ?
doobiwan
January 6, 2008 at 22:37
@bhw you could very well be right, I never thought of it like that.
It’s a pity if this does spell victory for BR. The whole reason for the split in the first place was that HD-DVD represented consumer interests – No region locks, no mandatory DRM. BR is the reason Microsoft was forced to include all the DRM changes to Windows Vista and why they chose to back HD-DVD.
It saddens me to think that the company that has shown the most disrespect for consumers may win out in the end. Personally I’d much rather see both fail and Digital Downloads win out in the end.
ocelot
January 8, 2008 at 07:50
Looks like the honeymoon with HD DVD and Paramount is over. Poor HD DVD, so lonely.
http://kotaku.com/341998/paramount-moving-to-blu+ray-hd+dvd-dead-can-we-all-just-get-on-with-our-lives-now
ocelot
January 8, 2008 at 11:03
I don’t understand why people are even considering digital downloads. Not nearly enough people have high speed connections that could make use of it, especially in SA.
If you had a choice of purchasing a game on a physical disc or purchasing it online and having it downloaded to your console, which would you choose? I know I would buy the disc all the time.
LazySAGamer
January 8, 2008 at 11:27
Well we don’t get many chances for digital distribution but I can promise you I prefer downloaded content.
I was part of the COD4 beta which we downloaded onto the Xbox and then loaded it straight from the dashboard, easily the nicest way to play games.
If I could download all of my games onto a server or HDD and then just chuck the discs I would do it,
JP
January 8, 2008 at 12:21
Then your HDD blows and you are without all your games. Or what if you run out of HDD space you’ll have to delete old games to DL new ones. You’ll never play the old ones again because it’ll be too much trouble to re-DL the whole game AGAIN.
LazySAGamer
January 8, 2008 at 12:33
I am biased since I was robbed 12 months ago and my entire gaming collection was stolen. If I could redownload them all again it would have saved me thousands 😉
I want to be given the option in the future…. R500 retail vs R350 download….
ocelot
January 8, 2008 at 14:16
Still, R350 download which you will not be able to sell. No thanks.