I read this really eye-opening piece on the death of HD-DVD to Blu-ray, and Microsoft’s stakes, involvement, and (typically) underhanded activity regarding it. The piece is called Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD. I didn’t pay much attention to the next-gen hi-def “format wars” beyond the tech specs and features. I knew that Microsoft was involved with HD-DVD, but I didn’t realize the extent. Wow.
Boy am I glad that Blu-ray won out. I actually didn’t think they would, considering Sony has had failures with Beta and UMD (well, failures in terms of where they wanted those formats to go). Seriously, Sony makes a killer gaming system (the PS2 is still incredible, and the PS3 is no shabby piece of hardware either). But this time they did things right with Blu-ray. I actually bent and got a PS3 a few months ago, not for any desire or want of Blu-ray, but simply for the games, now that there’s some good titles to choose from (Heavenly Sword is freaking amazing!). I don’t think I would have regretted the purchase if HD-DVD won the “war”, but the nice thing is now I can watch the winning format without ponying up for another player.
Although, truth be told, when I was looking at standalone blu-ray players, I came to the conclusion that I may just buy another PS3 (probably for Christmas this year I think) to act as the “blu-ray” player of the house. You certainly get more bang for your buck.