DVD players finally more common than VCRs
The DVD celebrated its 10-year anniversary this fall, but DVD players have only just this week surpassed VHS players in number, according to a survey by Nielsen Media Research, as reported by the New York Times.
Because Microsoft and Sony have entangled gaming in a new format war, we often blog on the HD-DVD versus Blu-ray debate that began this year. If DVD took ten years to reach this important milestone, how long will it take one of the new formats to "win," considering that the DVD didn't have to battle against a rival format? In 2016, won't the whole idea of physical distribution of digital content seem rather archaic? Will the DVD last long enough to bridge the gap to the all-digital utopia, or will we need a stopgap format like Blu-ray or HD-DVD?
Nobody knows, but we do know that so long as games like fl0w and Geometry Wars exist, Luddite gamers can rest easy knowing that there will be at least some very good games that don't require a $200 gamble on stopgap formats.
