The real reason Sony bought MGM: It's all about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD
The real reason (or at least one of the really big reasons) why Sony just dropped $4.85 billion on Hollywood movie studio MGM? To get extra leverage in their high stakes showdown with NEC and Toshiba over whether it's going to be their Blu-ray format or NEC and Toshiba's HD-DVD format that emerges as the high-definition successor to today's DVD. For awhile it looked like HD-DVD had something of an edge there, but at the end of the day it'll probably mainly come down to which format the movie studios release their films in, which is why Sony decided to simply buy another studio and guarantee that they used Blu-ray rather than HD-DVD.
