Blu-Ray
So with the sad demise of HD-DVD, Blu-Ray is declared the winner of the HD media war... A shocking turn of events, since Sony usually does something stupid enough to make their supported format fail. But, now that Blu-Ray is the only one out there, Sony's been making a bunch of new players! The catch?
They're expensive... Really expensive, with no signs of dropping in price.
People are surprised over this? You let SONY win the format war. The brilliant minds behind the Sony Memory Stick. You know, that proprietary solid-state drive format that failed to catch on and was only used by Sony technologies, and was expensive for an incredibly long time? You're going to see that happen here. Sony is going to find all sorts of ways to keep the price as high as possible. I mean, that's is what businesses do, but Sony is notorious for marketing their stuff at premium prices. Right now, their excuse is that they're introducing more features into their players, and discontinuing the old ones, thereby keeping the status quo on the price.
Me, personally, I won't even consider HD technology until the discs are 20 dollars, and the hardware is around 30 to 50, like DVDs are today. I have an HDTV, sure, but I use it strictly for gaming and as a second monitor. If anyone dares bring up the fact that a Playstation 3 is worth the cost for a Blu-Ray player? Go suck a lemon. I only bought a Playstation 2 when Okami came out, and I only did that when there was one on eBay for 20 bucks. I despise Sony's marketing practices with a passion, so there's no way in heck that I'm going to even consider getting a PS3 until I can find one on eBay for far, far less than the asking price.
But anyway, let's review: Sony wins the format war. People feign surprise when Sony doesn't seem to be too concerned with lowering the price of the format. The news itself isn't that Sony is doing this. The story here is that people are stupid enough to think Sony might actually lower the prices in the first place.