Newsweek: Blu-ray the movie winner
On his Newsweek blog, N'gai Croal explores the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies in relation to gamers. While the Xbox 360 can play HD-DVD with its add-on drive, Croal says that's a non-starter because those sorts of console add-ons rarely sell to more than 10 percent of the base. Because of more studio -- and electronic company -- support for Blu-ray, and the PS3 pushing that format into homes, Croal names Blu-ray as the winner.
We go with his reasoning to a point, but we're not ready to call the race for Blu-ray. Instead, we're voting for none of the above; the market may adopt HD downloads before it embraces a new disc format.
HD downloads will gobble up bandwidth, but the Xbox 360 will soon sell HD movies and TV shows. Consumers without 360s will need a way to play HD shows on a TV; the real format war may be between the Xbox 360 download service and yet-to-be-announced stand-alone boxes that only download HD movies.
