Howard Stringer said:
"We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides."
I still don't get the BDA's comments about 'merits' and 'performance.'
Hey guys? Your spec's not complete. You're shipping INCOMPLETE HARDWARE for an INCOMPLETE FORMAT. How does that equate to superior performance and value? Can your players do that little picture-in-picture thingy that the 360 add-on could do last November? No? Then.... WTF are you talking about? :lol
Oh, right. Bitrate and capacity. Too bad the benefits of higher bitrate have yet to show a marked difference, video wise, in any BD release I've seen. Though the capacity issue may hold weight if it compromises audio tracks on some discs. (And it might, I'm not an audiophile so I don't pay much attention to that. Still... the overall impact of bitrate and capacity seems more of a talking point right now than a real differentiating factor for end users.)
At the same time, he played down the importance of the battle, saying it was mostly a matter of prestige whose format wins out in the end.
So, you're not playing for the eight billion dollars? This whole war is just for pride? LOL
BoboBrazil said:
Really up to Toshiba. They could end this thing right now. Really I see Toshiba as holding out in this whole thing, moreso than the BDA. It is several companies against 1...
Well, Toshiba's never been in the fight alone. Universal has been a staunch partner. Paramount's gone red. It not
quite Toshiba versus the world.
neverknowsbest said:
Ugh, format fanboys are terrible. This includes the executives at Toshiba. Yes, I'm biased because I own a PS3, but when the PS3 came out and outsold every single standalone player by an order of magnitude they should have just said fuckit. Actually, they should have seen that it would happen and tried to get in on that action. Now the war has been going on for so long and it seems like such a stalemate that I don't even have any urge to buy HD movies anymore.
See, but there's this thing in business and marketing called "positioning," and it has a lot to do with psychology. As it applies here, it pretty much says that you can't send a game console to do a standalone player's job. Certainly, it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, PS3 is the reason for Blu-ray's disc sales lead, not to mention its very survival. That's good and bad because while Blu-ray is in the game, and some would say winning the game, it also places CE partners like Panasonic and Samsung in a tough spot because face it, those standalone players just aren't selling like hotcakes. And how could you expect them to, when the PS3 is more future proof and costs less?
On the other hand, the PS3 has cost Sony dearly in its game division. A year into the console's life, it's still being outsold by the PS2. And of course, the majority of the Blu-ray base is made up of PS3s... I think that's something the studios will consider carefully if and when Toshiba moves enough hardware this holiday to give them pause.
Business people see and appreciate the difference between people who would buy a PlayStation3 as BD player and those who would not. They understand the importance of a base built on standalone players. The Trojan horse theory is beautiful and clever, but it breaks some fundamental rules of marketing that may doom it to failure.
We don't know that yet. But we shall see.