A hollow victory, from a gaming perspective

In accordance with my previous post, this post is not about bashing Sony. It's about defending my previous statements.

Now that Blu-ray has one the format war, you might expect me to come out and say I was wrong that designing the PS3 around Blu-ray was a bad idea. But I don't think it was a bad idea. Even though we now know for sure that Blu-ray will continue to be used (at least until downloads become the norm, but we don't know how far off that is) and the PS3 is only a little bit more expensive than the 360, Sony still did irreparable damage to the console's future. The reason? The high price point originally led many early adopters to choose the Xbox 360. Also, even though the format is a success, there's little reason to believe it will replace DVD any time too soon, given how long it took DVD to replace VHS when it first came out. That's why comparing the PS3's Blu-ray player to the PS2's DVD player doesn't make sense; DVD existed long before the PS2. Maybe when more people are willing to get a new player, the PS3 will seem more attractive. That seems likely. However, there's another caveat of the argument we should look at: Sony wanted to use the Blu-ray movie functionality of the PS3 to attract more casual gamers, or at least I remember reading that; leave a comment if I'm wrong. Even if I am wrong, it seems reasonable that they wouldn't push the movies to attract hardcore gamers. But the casual gamers seem to have made their choice, and they've chosen Wii.

All that being said, though, including Blu-ray with the PS3 ended up being a worthwhile risk from a movie perspective. And I do believe that it will/has increase(d) the PS3's sales. But I also know that the PS3 is still lagging far behind its competitors, and I think Blu-ray is part of the reason. Not the main reason, by any stretch of the imagination, but a reason. As for what I think the main reason is, I've talked about that before.

Another important note: if I ever discuss Blu-ray or HD-DVD again on this blog or the radio show, it will only be for things that directly relate specifically to gaming or game consoles. I don't think the media formats themselves are inherently related to video games, which is what this blog and radio show are about.