In last week’s surprise announcement from Warner Bros regarding their decission to support only Blu-ray, the rival HD-DVD camp is busy with damage control and is stating that its format "has not lost" yet.
Toshiba Consumer Products of America president, Akiyo Ozaka, said HD-DVD isn’t out of the race and commented, "We were very disappointed with Warner Brothers’ announcement. Sales of HD DVD were very good last year, especially in October to December."
Jodi Sally, a Toshiba marketing executive, refused to say die and dismissed all the talk about HD-DVD already having lost the battle.
"It’s difficult for me to believe when all the pundits declare that HD DVD is dead. Clearly, the events of the last few days have led many of you to that conclusion. We have been declared dead before. The reality is we ended 2007 with a majority of the year-to-date market share."
While it looks gloomy for HD-DVD, history seems to indicate that nothing is a sure thing for Sony. The PS3, once considered the obvious winner for the console wars has had an uphill battle to grab market share. In the format wars for video tape format dominance in the 70’s and 80s, Sony looked like the winner in their campaign to make Betamax the standard for the industry, only to lose to rival VHS.
Whether this upset scenario will repeat itself is definitely a long shot, to say the least, but the HD-DVD supporters are hoping for a repeat miracle for their suddenly declared underdog format.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, if it ever had plans in the works for releasing an HD-DVD onboard player for the Xbox 360, the news of another major movie studio going over to Blu-ray maybe causing the marketing brass to reevaluate their strategies.
[ via reuters]
