Friday, December 1, 2006
Xbox Still King; Blu-ray Stillborn?
Posted by Damion Chaplin in "HARDWARE" @ 01:00 PM
"As we mentioned last week, the Xbox 360 is the most mature of the new generation of gaming platforms. This gives it a massive advantage in terms of available games and accessories. It also gave it a massive advantage in terms of available units. Early numbers suggest that even though both the Nintendo and the PlayStation 3 could have outsold it, manufacturing limitations kept their true potential from being reached. In addition, parents who can't get either of the constrained systems are now apparently shifting their buying behavior to the system they can buy, the Xbox 360 - rather than giving their kids an IOU or paying excessively high Ebay prices... With the Xbox 360 moving so strongly into the market and the top accessory this year being the $200 HD-DVD drive the battle may be over by year end. There is every chance that there may be as many as ten times more HD DVD players than Blu-ray players in the market by the end of the year - even if you don't factor in that HP, the current leader in PC sales, started shipping desktop computers with a $100 HD DVD option. This, coupled with a much lower overall cost for the stand alone players as well as better support for legacy TVs and dual mode disks, suggests that HD-DVD is now the format to beat."
This is a great editorial by Rob Enderle, and I think his points are spot-on. It's probably a little too early to declare Blu-ray dead, but certainly HD-DVD is well on its way to the top of the hill. All I can say is at least I saw betamax before it went extinct. :wink:
This is a great editorial by Rob Enderle, and I think his points are spot-on. It's probably a little too early to declare Blu-ray dead, but certainly HD-DVD is well on its way to the top of the hill. All I can say is at least I saw betamax before it went extinct. :wink:
