No surprises at the (deliberate?) confusion between the 2 points here.
It is true that
HD DVD stand-alones are out-selling
Blu-ray stand-alones (in Europe as well as the USA) and it's also true that the PS3 is not a 'stand-alone' high def DVD player.
That's just a fact.
The day
Toshiba or anyone else makes an HD DVD player that also plays games is the day that you get a comparison with the PS3 numbers included for that kind of player.
However, that does not exclude or alter the fact that PS3s (a Blu-ray capable machine) have sold in their millions (but rather less than
Sony had hoped, no matter what guesses they might make for future sales).
No-one has denied that
(despite the rather laughable implications of some).
If it's 7 million PS3s sold then great, all the better, it simply makes the point even stronger.
PS3 = Blu-ray is not a winning strategy.
Too few PS3 owners bother buying Blu-ray movies as we can see with a pathetic attachment rate of less than 1:1.
The (wholly expected) short-term boost in sales that the Blu-ray format got from this (PS3 = Blu-ray) strategy has led to the situation where anywhere between 15 - 25 times the number of HD DVD players has merely opened a (now shrinking) 60:40 'lead' in movie disc sales.
Big deal.
That is not 'good' and it's hardly something to crow about.
That situaion will only get worse for Blu-ray as HD DVD enters the mainstream mass-market at prices far below anything Blu-ray can compete with.
The sub $200 HD DVD player is almost here now and sub $150 will be here by X-mas.
(BTW Chinese component manufacture is nothing new & it's something they all do, check out the insides of the PS3, most if not all of it is Chinese.
That is not the same as licencing the designs and production of the entire unit to China.
Anyone who imagines Blu-ray has done the same thing as HD DVD and are expecting a Blu-ray version of the Venturer is just kidding themselves or ignorant of how this works)
Viacom/Paramount saw this and understood the implications.
They knew that the expense of Blu-ray production (now that Sony had switched off the subsidy) out-weighed the sligtly higher sales Blui-ray was experiencing in the short-term.
They also knew that the Blu-ray format itself was unfinished and going to be a big problem......why should they go to the expense and trouble of producing discs with 'profile 1.1' features when not one Blu-ray player on the market can meet those specs?
It is also a very big blow to Blu-ray that HD DVD now offers the greatest amount of available content, the greatest amount of exclusive content and the largest potential catalogue of movies.
For those who once claimed 'content is all' then it has to be HD DVD, it is HD DVD that has the most content.
Hence Viacom/Paramount dumped Blu-ray......and they didn't just go from exclusive to format neutral as had happened before but for the first time a major Hollywood studio actually dumped a format, Blu-ray.
The fanclub can dismiss this and make up stories about 'bribes' all they like (whilst choosing to ignore the facts about payments made for promote Blu-ray....Target end caps being the most recent and the now expired subsidy on Blu-ray disc production being the largest and most extensive 'bribe' if ever there was) but it makes not the slightest difference in the end, that is how it is.
I give it 12months until it is even beyond the most blinkered member of the Sony/PS3/Blu-ray fanclub to deny that Blu-ray is a PS3 proprietary format.
At the recent IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment used the show to boast about the company's Blu-ray movie sales across the world.
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