That wasn’t really a big factor. The Xbox played DVDs, and it only had slightly more market share than the Gamecube did.
The Gamecube didn’t really fail, for that matter. It had the smallest market share last generation, but Nintendo made money on hardware and software from day 1 (unlike the XBox, which was a giant money pit, or the PS2, which was sold at a loss for a while) and turned a tidy profit.
Having a built-in DVD player was absolutely a huge advantage for the PS2 when it launched, but the system was so dominant by the time the Gamecube launched that a DVD player in the 'Cube wouldn’t have made any difference.
Being a cheap Blu-Ray player has certainly helped the PS3, but certainly not to the same degree. PS3 sales are fairly unremarkable. Frankly, I still don’t expect Blu-Ray to be anything more than the new Laserdisc.
This is part of the reason I’m not excited about buying a PS3. The PS2’s DVD player was a great marketing checkbox, but I had to use one for a while as a DVD player, and it’s terrible. I like being able to rewind/fast forward more than 4x…:rolleyes:
Blu-Ray, Sony finally did it! They did it! They finally got their proprietary medium to be industry standard! Just in time for On-Demand to make physical media obsolete. Yay! Go Sony!
I’m one of those who only bought a PS3 (well, buying this week) for the Blu-Ray player. It was that or an Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD player. The reviews I read led me to believe the Xbox player was loud and intrusive while the PS3 player was quite and fairly high quality.
TBH, I’ve struggled to find many games that I actually want to play.
I can’t wait to watch Planet Earth in all its HD glory.
I believe for a long time the Cube was in second place worldwide, certainly until the third parties pulled support (not going to do a cite, its hard to get the information 4-5 years later). Its a matter of perception, the Xbox was a success in US and the UK, the Cube more so in Europe, and the Xbox was (and still is) a disaster in Japan (if thats not largest gaming market in world, its certainly the second).
But yet, Nintendo made money off everything sold…
Sony’s hype machine at the time was a tiger… Few people remember the claims made at the time that the “emotion engine” could render a human hair realistically in realtime, but thats what they were claiming. People held back from buying a Dreamcast (a nice machine with some good games). Some people will still argue that the PS2 is faster than the Cube (it isn’t) and even the Xbox (certainly not).
But I think the PS2 pretty much made the DVD format mainstream at the time. Its similar to the current claims about the Wii selling in quantity, but not the games. The theory was that people were buying PS2s because it was a cheap DVD player, and they only bought the games later…
Recent visits to the game shops in the UK, I’ve noticed the PS3 selling quite well now. There was three people standing in the queue to buy one last Saturday. Not sure if there’s a game out which is selling it though…
But yes, the Blue Ray has definitely sold the PS3, the same way the DVD sold the PS2. I do wonder what the difference would have been with the Xbox 360 if they’d put in a HD DVD in there… Probably not, the price would have made the sales suffer.
Personally my view is that both formats are likely to fail… I’m a gadget person, I have a LCD TV, and have no wish for a High Definition player. Not with 500 dvds and upscaling. The technology isn’t that much of a jump to justify the shift…
You can expect the major movie companies to fight tooth and nail against instant downloads of their movies for ownership. These companies have seen huge profits from the sale of DVD’s as a collectible item for the consumer and they are not about to let that go away. People aren’t willing to pay as much for a copy of a movie on their entertainment system as they are for a physical representation of that very same thing. As such, there is more money to be made selling the discs. You can expect to see these Blu-ray discs (Yeah, HD-DVD is dead) for at least the next 10 years. After that, who knows.
I’m starting to wonder if those here who claim that BluRay isn’t any better than upscaled DVD have actually watched a PROPERLY set-up 1080p movie. The difference between 1080p and DVD (and even between 1080p and 720/1080i that you get on HD cable) is mindblowing. The first time I saw a properly-presented 1080p BluRay movie (Oceans 13, believe it or not) I swore I’d never watch regular DVD again…im not gonna throw out my 500+ collection, but from now on its BluRay for everything new!
The turning point for me was that the PS3 added DivX/XviD compatibility. Using TVersity as a media server means I can keep movies on my hard drive until I watch them, and never mind burning them to DVD for later viewing. As soon as they add .mkv compatibility, I’ll be in heaven…
Yep, I was waiting until I was sure there were death-throes, but the Wal-Mart thing is it. Thank God I didn’t buy the X-Box add-on. Still, I’m not convinced the format as a whole will survive, so I’ll be perfectly content with my upscaler.
She’s right. Blu-ray may have beat out HD-DVD, but it may still lose to DVD. Just like Laser-disc lost to VHS. If the public doesn’t turn to Blu-Ray en masse (and I am with BBVL here) then it will limp along in the speciality Market until something much bigger and better comes around to wipe both DVD and Blu-Ray off the market. Like the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) that Tuckerfan linked to.
You can still get 8 track players from thrift stores and ebay and that technology has been obsolete and out of production for almost 30 years. DVD players wil be around until you die and well after.
