Media Wonk attended an industry dinner in Hollywood in early December where he ran into Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group president Kevin Tsujihara and home video president Ron Sanders.
According to Sanders, however, Warner's decision was driven by consumer behavior, more than an expectation of resolving the format war.
"It's hard for us to speculate about impact this will have on the format war. All we can do really is make the best decision for our business and the rest of it will really take care of itself, in time," he said. "One of the things you see in the NPD data for this fourth quarter was that even with a $100 [price] premium, Blu-ray set tops outsold HD set tops in December. Even with Toshiba having the lowest-cost player in the market, software sales remained 2 to 1 in favor of Blu-ray."
Xbox and EA have recently made baffling moves that define how bleak the future of the gaming industry is with major companies at the helm. Ryan Bates from "Last Word on Gaming" posits in this op-ed that maybe it's not ineptitude, but intention.
XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director Jake Solomon has founded a new studio to make a life sim game. Here's a new interview with him.
Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's plans to increase every department's margins.
"The plan to move Xbox games to other platforms is codenamed "Latitude" internally, and I know there's debate and unease at Microsoft about whether or not this is a good idea. More upcoming Microsoft-owned games slated for PlayStation are already being developed. At least for now, they're potentially obvious games you'd most likely expect. And yes, while it's true Microsoft is a prolific publisher on PlayStation already, it has typically revolved around specific franchises like Minecraft. From what I've heard, Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation, and it all revolves around Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood's mandate to increase every department's margins. "
Yeah, they are going to kill Xbox hardware.
"Yeah, they are going to kill Xbox hardware."
It's for the best.
Quit stringing along xbox fans and screwing over PlayStation owners.
An Xbox game on a Playstation. Never in my years of gaming did i ever thought this was gonna happen.
No way can they get rid of the hardware as probably 90% of game pass subscribers are hardware users.
Highly doubtful those users will move to PC or Cloud to subscribe there and the competition (Sony and Nin) will never have gamepass on their system.
If they want to keep the current subscribers, they need to keep releasing new hardware.
i think it will kill off the xbox brand. windows will be fine.
but there is and would be a chance that xbox might be killed off in the future. if they fail to make the money they put in. imo.
They wont kill it, but they will go fully PC while keeping xbox as a brand, and go multiplatform for the most part. They will also work tirelessly to diminish console gaming’s importance.
It would be best if Xbox goes the way of Sega, just make and publish games. I know I myself will not support them at all with buying games from them, you all can. 🙃
The Xbox brand will live for the games. I don’t expect Microsoft to entirely drop out of gaming hardware. They make Surface tablets and laptops. They’ll make Xbox branded hardware for those that want it.
"Microsoft is pushing for no "red line" for what games could come to PlayStation"
Forza and Starfield next?
Starfield would be no surprise and there's the rumor that it will come to Playstation after the Shattered Space DLC, Forza (along with Halo and Gears of War) I find less likely but I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually end up on PlayStation too, especially if Xbox give up on hardware and go the Sega route.
Not to worried about forza. I'd rather see others like what inxile and obsidian are working on. Starfield sounds like it needs more time in the oven so let it cook first imo. If starfield and it's a small if does release on ps it'll be in the fall around the time for dlc or right at the dlc and come packaged with it.
In the words of Phil Spencer when he was talking about Nintendo last year
“It's just taking a long time for Microsoft to see that their future exists off of their own hardware"
100%!!
I wonder what happened to that dude that was always here posting those court articles with cartoons about MS spending all those billions in studios. He suddenly disappeared, I guess he doesn't like bad news when the green brand is in trouble. No new articles from him as of late...
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thats new right there. The reason why they out sold is because they have the most movies and arguably the best movies available in HD! Go Blu!!!
and this is before the over a million PS3's sold in that month.
December really has been one heck of a month for sony
I feel bad because yesterday i saw someone picking up a HD DVD player in Tesco, i wonder what there reaction would have been once they found out about Warner going blu
sony is really showing how 08 will be there year!
lol to hd-dvd
Toshiba screwed them self seriously.
ppl who thought 99 hd-dvd players will pull through are thinking way too one sided.
ITs good for consumers in the short term, but consumer electronic companys want to make money esp for new tech..
99 dollars for new tech means low profit margins... hence the reason why toshiba only produced the hardware.