Soldato
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Toshiba calling it quits on HD-DVD
- Thread starter ic1male
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I think I posted this in the wrong thread
Universal statement:
"The path for widespread adoption of the next-generation platform has finally become clear. Universal will continue its aggressive efforts to broaden awareness for hi-def’s unparalleled offerings in interactivity and connectivity, at an increasingly affordable price. The emergence of a single, high-definition format is cause for consumers, as well as the entire entertainment industry, to celebrate. While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray."
Where did you read this?
If this isnt just a repost from another forum (which has been invented) then this is brilliant news, with Paramount just to make the only decision
It could still take time for br's to start appearing from these studios though
Caporegime
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No I'm actually fairly certain that what I read was saying they specifically weren't making loses on per unit sales of PS3 anymore. I do know the difference and often read between the lines.
Look, the original statement was not a question, more a rhetorical statement..
For the love of god
please read it.. Well, just this bit..
Now, please, don't take the banter that ensued too seriously, but if you just look at the original 'statement'.. it's more of a factual thing.. perhaps I should have expanded "non gaming purposes" to "only for BR playback", but I thought the premise of what I was saying was relatively clear..
Yes of course there is plenty of 'benefit' that can be argued about value added features, long term strats, blah, blah, blah, I understand 'enough' about business principles, but that's not the point.. anyone of your scenarios would yield a revenue stream, sure, but that's not the scenario I mentioned is it?
Just a simple 'ironic' observation that is indefensible, even if Sony had planned it that way all along.. why you feel the need to 'defend' this I have no idea.. maybe it's a misunderstanding, maybe you really have lost the plot and are now in Sony hype mode, I don't know..
Quite frankly the fact you 'bet' anything and use phrases such as "trust me blu-ray is going to be MASSIVELY profitable" and "HOME Is going to be MASSIVE for the PS3" does not sound like someone who is approaching this on a level keel.. so forgive me if I just label you as a bit of a naive fanboy..
Anyone with an ounce of common sense would sit back, look at what's happening in the world as far as established and emerging technologies go, and be fairly open minded, I love BR as a format, as I did HD-DVD, I own loads, I rent loads, but that doesn't make me want to declare Jihad on anything non-blu-ray or bet my house down at the bookies on it.. I see downloads becoming more and more prevalent.,. and when it certainly looks like it's going to take 3 years+ before BR players are at a price level for mass adoption, that's an awful long time for competitive technologies to break through.. I'll just be patient, enjoy the films anyway I can get them and leave the Jihad'ing to those that revel in it..
What are you actually saying? if you cut the crap and just read the underlying sentiment? PS3 is going to obliterate the 360 and 'win' a 'war' exterminating the resistance? What exactly, at any point has anyone ever eluded to the PS3 not being number 1? experts don't seem to think the PS3 will whitewash the other two consoles, in fact, many say the Wii could well keep it's massive lead?
The fact is mr Latte, the PS3 HOME may be really popular, it may have loads of nerds buying Nike trainers building a pad and persona a million miles away from reality, you may get blokes dressed in expensive virtual ann summers outfits calling themselve shirley, but as a gamer, this gives you in reality, bugger all.. the only credible argument you can come up with is, that if it's popular, it may encompass most of 'LIVE' as it stands today and more developers will develop games for the PS3? well, last I looked the 360 was doing well enough for developers to jointly develop for both platforms, and I really don't see this chaning overnight.. and hell SONY can't even seem to implement the most essential basics of cross game invites/chat, which lets face it is the crux of the online experience as a gamer... I see that so far, the PS3 'vision' is continually all about the future.. which seems to be stretching out further and further.. and as for big franchises, cool, KZ2 has alledgedly cost 40Million+, and taken forever, sure it'll be ace, but as a business plan, it's not as sound as it could be, but I'm sure that's their plan after all give us games so good that have taken 5 years to develop which net them very little, but it's ok becuase in the long term it'll attract new customers..
It's always long term this, long term that, call be cynical, I just want good stuff now.. I don't give a stuff about popularity, as long as any console has enough of a base that it gets the games, that's enough for me, I play the games, I don't brag about the possibility of the next big thing that's always just around the next corner..
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I don't see why you are so suprised. With Toshiba announcing that they have virtually scrapped HD-DVD then where else could Universal go other than BD?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7252506.stm
interesting how the BBC are stating 10.5 million globally sold PS3's (installed in homes, not in retail or anthing else)
No way is broadband going to be viable download source for hd in the next 3 years, the backbone isnt even there for mass adoption let alone local cabling
(even IF people on a wide scale are prepared to pay for it)
You are nuts to think it will take 3 years for stand alone br players to cost little enough for mass adoption as they are already down to £250 or so, with Universal and Paramount (hopefully) all on board by summer, all major manufacturers will roll out loads of budget machines at the latest spec
joebob - Im not surprised, it was just the speed of the reaction more than anything - and its always nice to see the original source
interesting how the BBC are stating 10.5 million globally sold PS3's (installed in homes, not in retail or anthing else)
No way is broadband going to be viable download source for hd in the next 3 years, the backbone isnt even there for mass adoption let alone local cabling
(even IF people on a wide scale are prepared to pay for it)
You are nuts to think it will take 3 years for stand alone br players to cost little enough for mass adoption as they are already down to £250 or so, with Universal and Paramount (hopefully) all on board by summer, all major manufacturers will roll out loads of budget machines at the latest spec
joebob - Im not surprised, it was just the speed of the reaction more than anything - and its always nice to see the original source
Soldato
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they already are. ps3's can be had for £270 right now. 6 years ago, i paid £230 for a toshiba sd-210e dvd player that was considered a 'budget' player and by that point, dvd was already in sprint mode.
ive no idea why you have to keep using antagonistic terms, calling him a fanboy and generally phrasing your posts in such a derogatory way, there's really no need. sony will make money from anything BR related. so what if they loose money on the players, they are banking on making it back on the films and games and everything else that goes with the ps3 or BR itself.
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Agreed, plus it's hard to put a value on it but I bet Sony would revel in the fact that they could state so many million more PS3's in homes due to being solely used as a BD player because it's promoting the product overall. Aunt Bess and Uncle Ben get a PS3 to play BD on and before you know about it their extended family knows they have one and then the kids get a PS3 for xmas - word of mouth and general hype about a system can be marvelous advertising.
You're being a bit harsh. From where I'm standing Mr Latte is giving his considered point of view, but because you don't agree with it you're going off on very long, not always entirely relevant rants and being a bit abusive!!!
I used to thing that Mr Latte was a bit blinkered with MicroSoft specs (not going to go as far as to say fanboy), but he really isn't. He has quite strong opinions but that doesn't mean he has preference for one camp over the other - he just says it as he see's it.
I think most people agree the sub £100 is where it hots up, you know as well as me that BR revenues are tiny compared to DVD, which is where BR is trying to get to, and even then at sub £100 it's still IMO not going to get main stream until it's much lower then that..
And as for antagonistic, well, call me intolerant, it's a public forum, and if you read the above post by me explaining to mr Latte my original 'point' that he so unbelievable missed then starts with the 'MASSIVE' comments, the 'war' comments, blah, blah, blah, with absolutely no balance whatsoever, then I'm just providing that balance that seems to be so badly missing at times in the console forum..
(no i don't believe that really.. but if some people can be as daft as they 'seem' to be on here, and it not being a bit of a wind up, then this forum truly has some very sad people on it).Infact, you call be antagonistic, then give me some rhubarb about how BR players are at a price level for mass adoption? (£270)... we are talking DVD player 'mass adoption' here, the level the press/experts are saying BR is trying to get to? the level that recoups the development/infrastructure costs etc? is this some conspiracy or something? if that's not a deliberate pretending to be naive wind up, I don't know what is?
As I said, lately I've been quite intolerant when people dont read my posts, but just go off on a tangent about things that I never even eluded too, with some unbalanced views that yes, border on 'fanboyism', that is very rude in my book, and right now, I don't feel like pandering to people, which incidentally always seem like the same few people, when their supposed views show a clear lack of balance and not even an attempt at showing any real evidential logic to their claims..
Perhaps its the fact that I deal with similar type people as part of my Job, looking after difficult engineers does tend to give you a no bull approach to people management..
Soldato
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Infact, you call be antagonistic, then give me some rhubarb about how BR players are at a price level for mass adoption? (£270)... we are talking DVD player 'mass adoption' here, the level the press/experts are saying BR is trying to get to? the level that recoups the development/infrastructure costs etc? is this some conspiracy or something? if that's not a deliberate pretending to be naive wind up, I don't know what is?
how is that an antagonistic comment? its the truth, when i bought a dvd player they were already being widely adopted and i only paid £50 less than you can get a ps3 for right now, and obviously £230 was worth more 6 years ago. i think the cost of hd hardware has dropped considerable quickly, far quicker than any format before it. but people are all to quick to forget that. or maybe they weren't around to experience it? i dont know.
Firstly im not trying to be cheeky in anyway and i have to admit to being surprised that Joebob in particular supports my views on this as we often havnt agreed in the past. Thanks for that.....
The £100 thing isnt the case anymore were not still living in the 1980s. Id say £200 is the prime target mark these days for a electronic device to go widespread.
Wii if anything proved this recently with non gamers buying into a novelty product. Yes a very much hyped product and one that has ZERO High Defination never mind Blu Ray video support.
Look at HDTV sales and the expected sales of these is continued to grow. Yet you think people wont be able to afford a approx £200 player that makes the most of their new TV? Sorry but id go as far as saying that if anything will hold back BD now its the arrival of studios coming out with more titles, more than the pricepoint of the hardware.
You might think im a fool but for assuming what i think is indeed the position i believe Sony and Blu Ray now is in. You also have no idea exactly what Home allows or brings to the table. Its not just a sims style customisable front end with a few fancy ideas or allowing video chat, vocie or text communication. My understanding is it also fully enables all your PS3 stored content to be acessed,shared and viewed or controlled via not only your PSP but Sony/Ericson mobile phone and from here it can be linked or indeed uploaded via web browsers. It also works two ways... with "real world content" available to be shared or used in Home but also "virtual world Home content" available in the real world. As far as im aware Microsoft or Nintendo are offering nothing like this and the closest Live gets to using the internet is to seeing your buddies gamertags/info and if their online. Other than that weve had uploading stuff like "photomode screenshots" onto the net. Home offers so much more, it will be new exciting and redefines how console/pcs/internet are combined. Expect the internet to have peoples virtual world profiles shared in fanbase communities / websites....
From the games perspective i think in the next 12 months PS3 also will have maybe more interesting exclusives than X360 exclusives. GT5, Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, Metalgear etc.
Then again im just being a fanboy or am i indeed just expressing what i see coming and basing my opinion on that. X360 is still a great console with great games but PS3 is becoming once again the cooler or "identified as the best system" to own.
The £100 thing isnt the case anymore were not still living in the 1980s. Id say £200 is the prime target mark these days for a electronic device to go widespread.
Wii if anything proved this recently with non gamers buying into a novelty product. Yes a very much hyped product and one that has ZERO High Defination never mind Blu Ray video support.
Look at HDTV sales and the expected sales of these is continued to grow. Yet you think people wont be able to afford a approx £200 player that makes the most of their new TV? Sorry but id go as far as saying that if anything will hold back BD now its the arrival of studios coming out with more titles, more than the pricepoint of the hardware.
You might think im a fool but for assuming what i think is indeed the position i believe Sony and Blu Ray now is in. You also have no idea exactly what Home allows or brings to the table. Its not just a sims style customisable front end with a few fancy ideas or allowing video chat, vocie or text communication. My understanding is it also fully enables all your PS3 stored content to be acessed,shared and viewed or controlled via not only your PSP but Sony/Ericson mobile phone and from here it can be linked or indeed uploaded via web browsers. It also works two ways... with "real world content" available to be shared or used in Home but also "virtual world Home content" available in the real world. As far as im aware Microsoft or Nintendo are offering nothing like this and the closest Live gets to using the internet is to seeing your buddies gamertags/info and if their online. Other than that weve had uploading stuff like "photomode screenshots" onto the net. Home offers so much more, it will be new exciting and redefines how console/pcs/internet are combined. Expect the internet to have peoples virtual world profiles shared in fanbase communities / websites....
From the games perspective i think in the next 12 months PS3 also will have maybe more interesting exclusives than X360 exclusives. GT5, Killzone 2, Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, Metalgear etc.
Then again im just being a fanboy or am i indeed just expressing what i see coming and basing my opinion on that. X360 is still a great console with great games but PS3 is becoming once again the cooler or "identified as the best system" to own.
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DVD players are sub £20 to the 'masses' , £260 is magnitudes higher, I also bought into DVD early (Samsung err, can't remember the model, but the first one to be region hackable) but DVD wasn't main stream when players where at that level, I was only person I knew with one.. films wheren't plentiful, and it took quite some time before players dropped to the magical £50-£100 then reasonably quickly everyone had one.,. and as a technology every single person with a TV benefitted from the very noticable resolution nicrease that DVD offered over vanilla VHS. BR is only advantageous for HD TV owners, and also arguably, a lot of people at normal viewing distances are quite happy with DVD (I'm not though!).
In fact, just a quick google..
So it took 6 years for DVD to equal VHS in the marketplace.. now I know DVD != BR in today's terms, but clearly these things don't happen overnight..
And what you said is just plainly not factual, BR is so far from DVD right now, with players at this £230-£270 level that it's almost a million miles from being mass adopted 'today'.. is it the term mass adoption? I mean when BR player ownership approaches DVD player ownership, that's mass adoption, and we are just so so far away right now, backed up by every sales statistics in the field..
and here's my other regular contributor..
OK, so you are calling me nuts..
My logic on this is reading around the subject, and using the rule of thumb and I must say optimistic rule that emerging technologies can halve in price per annum.. this is very rare, but lets just use it for now..
So, PS3, RRP£300 in year one, in year 2, £150, and year 3 £75
standalones, RRP £250ish in year 1, £125 in year 2, £62,50 in year three..
Now, although no hard figures exist, the magical figure of sub £100 is bounded around as the mass adoption price.. so lets say £50-£100, in this case, that would be year 3 of both the PS3 and standalones.. so there ismy logic, I believe it's researched and balanced, and in fact uses an entirely optimistic halving of price per year, clearly, the PS3 is not going to be £150 next year, but I'll just be generous in the calculations..
Then as above, it seems DVD took 6 years to reach VHS ownership levels, so again 3 years would seem a pretty good historical guess from that angle..
So you call me nuts, but I believe I tried to be balanced, I've erred on the side of being highly optimistic with price drops and you offer no evidentially backed up logic to counter it..
Not being funny, as I've already strayed over the mark today, but how do you arrive at that?
For example, the HD-DVD drives where £100 in the states for quite some time when HD-DVD was looking 'OK' ish, I know that format confusion etc existed, but lets not cloud what are orders of magnitude here, and yet comparing DVD player sales figures to HD-DVD players, it would seem that £100 wasn't enough to tempt people in the numbers that would be anywhere near 'mass adoption'..
It doesn't matter what cost what in 1980 surely, its more about how much things cost in general, e.g today, DVD players are £20ish, £200 is ten times this (ok, that wasn't meant to be condescending), that seems unrealistic..
Then there are factors as stated above, only HDTV owners benefit, and some people just can't see the difference between DVD and BR through their eyes/viewing distances....
And I have read around this a few times, for example, http://hiddenwires.co.uk/resourcesnews2007/news20070215-02.html
They say $200 (as near as damn it £100) and it's quite a prevalent figure..
And kudos, the last post was much more like the old mr Latte.. to whom I'd apologise unreservedly to for being so intolerant..
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Soldato
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I reckon this should be settled with a fight.
Your being silly now.
Your right loads of people wont give a damn about Blu Ray, they dont even care for HDTV and they maybe only bought a DVD player because VHS was dying off.
We are not saying Blu Ray is going to outsell or overtake DVD anytime soon.
What i personally have been telling you is that i see within 12 months Blu Ray release coming out at an alarming rate, i see retail stores more than doubling their Blu Ray shelf space with major advertising for it and i see a large market with people wanting hi Def video but scared or undecided before with two formats.
Your right loads of people wont give a damn about Blu Ray, they dont even care for HDTV and they maybe only bought a DVD player because VHS was dying off.
We are not saying Blu Ray is going to outsell or overtake DVD anytime soon.
What i personally have been telling you is that i see within 12 months Blu Ray release coming out at an alarming rate, i see retail stores more than doubling their Blu Ray shelf space with major advertising for it and i see a large market with people wanting hi Def video but scared or undecided before with two formats.
Actually HD-DVD tried to give 5 movies away with players and then even more movies upto 8 with certain Panasonic players was available to help spur the market interest. It had more titles available and a wider selection. It was more affordable hardware. In America it actually went to as low as $99 not £100 in some USA stores under special promotion.
All this failed.
If price is a highly driving factor to sucess then tell me why Blu Ray with more expensive hardware, less movies and an unfinished specification has been able to sell more and gain studio support?
The answer is not so much the Blu Ray format or indeed its superior technical specifications or that Disney / Fox had always been in the blue camp. No the answer is because of a little black console that has massively outsold HD-DVD and with the understanding that after a slow start to both the birth of Blu Ray and PS3 that the success of one guranteed the success of the other.
Like VHS the war was won by getting more players of one format sold into peoples homes. PS3 is today Sonys anwser of achieving that and by making it a much more attractive device in general to the masses. Having achieved this enabled Sony to get Warner onboard.
All i can say regards sales is you cant compare the move from VHS-DVD and the growth or time period it took DVD to grow. We live in an entirely different world now that is digital crazy.
Gadets sell in the millions, families these days have more money, then you have finance,credit options available to most people that didnt exist back in DVD times as they do now. Nor was the internet such a huge part to sales or indeed communities like forums such as this one were many sales are generated by owners of such devices sharing their opinions of such products.
Dont underestimate the power of self selling or internet communities. To give you an example take GT5p were in a AV Forums thread i helped with a few others eventually turn a thread about a highly awaited game demo convincing people into spending approx £300 in buying GT5p game with a Logitech G25 steering wheel and Play Seat. I think 5 or 6 people since December in the thread have invested in such equipment all from simple discussion and opinons of others. Think about that £300 to experience a Demo at its best. (money well spent too)
What we know now is that BD as a format is now guranteed to suceed which simply means PS3 as a format is going to sell millions, faster than originally expected.
This is a fair comment to make and how Sony or its partners go about adopting sales strageties is anyones guess but its also reasonable to assume we are going to see a massive marketing drive both from within Sony and the movie industry in general.
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Soldato
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There's only one way to settle this. Get Harry Hill quick - "FIGHT!!!!!!!!!"
Even though we already know the winner
Even though we already know the winner