I honestly think that Toshiba and the HD-DVD group just got too arrogant. Back in October 2007 at a BR industry event Warner Brothers VP of HD Media, Dan Silverburg, said the following.
Now given that he said the above at a Blu-ray event its a quite strong hint, but he then closed his speech by saying...
Now WB did go on the defensive after that, publicly saying that WB was still format neutral and that he had been misquoted. However shortly after that the man behind WB failed dual format discs left the company, and then WB's chief of Technical Operations (Chris Cookson) left, and turned up as president of Sony Pictures Technologies.
Rumours above WB going BR exclusive were doing the rounds on AV forums (with the above info quoted endlessly) from October last year, that Toshiba say they had no idea makes them either really arrogant or really dumb. I mean a Warner VP let it slip last October and Toshiba claim to have not bothered doing anything about it! Solid business practice that.
Scaff
I see your point, and it does seem that Toshiba at least should have had the hint of what could've been coming from the Warner Brothers.
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Oh FK, what did you do! You are gonna make me reply every single one of those, aren't you!
It isn't the amount of smoke but the type of smoke. A lot of smoke from message boards means nothing. A lot of smoke from named industry insiders means a lot.
The where there's smoke there's fire rationale has more strength in the theory that Microsoft wanted top create confusion and kill both formats so they could hurry along their digital download plans as that has been openly said by analysts (Yssman quoted one) and Hollywood types, most notably Michael Bay.
And even if there were payoffs and every rumor is true then Sony and Toshiba were both doing it, just Sony did it better, so I still see no problems here.
First of all, I never said that it was any kind of problem at all. It's not like either side broke any laws, as far as we are aware.
On smokes, you seem to think that I get my info from message boards, but that is false. Even when I do hear stuff on message boards, first thing I do is do a google news search and see who is reporting it. Yes, it would be nice if named industry source is breaking the story, but in supposed backroom deals, that is highly unrealistic, at least I think.
Toshiba helped Sony build the Cell chip. The factory deal was rumored in August, confirmed in October, and just now is getting finalized.
Here is a story from October about it.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/18/sony-sells-cell-to-toshiba/
If the deal included an HD-DVD death then Toshiba wasted a ton of money in the interim, more than they gained from the Cell deal.
The only reason the timing looks suspicious is because most news outlets didn't pay attention to the Toshiba/Sony Cell deal until the HD-DVD/BD news hit and then they tried to link something old, but new to them, to something new. It only works if you didn't pay attention over six months ago.
Well, I would've never claimed that HD DVD-Cell Chip plant deal would put Toshiba in black somehow. Not even a consolation price. If infact there was a deal, I'd think it's Sony telling Toshiba that if they scratch Sony's back by speeding up the termination of HD DVD bidness(
), Sony will scratch Toshiba's back by closing the plant deal on Toshiba's terms.
The rumor is Sony paid $400 million to Warner Bros. I'm trying to find a valid story but all I am getting are forum posts. I still cannot find where this rumor started from. Not one news story.
Why would you accept hundreds of millions now when you have the opportunity to make billions in the next ten years if you don't? Sure some business executives may jump without thinking but not as many as Sony has been accused of paying. So either they didn't get paid or they did, but because they knew they would go BD anyway. The only confirmed licensing and royalty deals are with the studios that signed on in BD development to help with the development and launch.
On why WB would accept "hundreds", I think you answered it yourself. They were going Blu ray anyway. 400 sounds steep to me, and I wouldn't claim, or think that any deal between WB and Sony(if existed) would be that favorable to WB either.
I hate shopping at Wal*Mart but when Lost Season 3 is $60 on BD vs $99 at Circuit City or the Spiderman Trilogy is $55 vs $65 at Best Buy and $85 at Circuit City it is the place to look unless someone else is running a big sale.
By the way, how does Circuit City manage to sell anything at those prices?
I used to love Circuit City, but I pretty much just go with BestBuy now, due to convenience. Circuit City website is useless, too. One thing they are(at least were) good at is the low price gurantee though. Maybe you can get them to beat Walmart's pricing using that. Maybe.
But stand-alone player sales did not matter, unless you were the HD-DVD camp trying to prove your viability. Sony always touted their actual disc sales.
I disagree completely on this one. Standalone player sales were critical to Blu ray, HD DVD, the whole DVD industry. Even with HD DVD going obsolete, I think it's going to take Blu ray some serious work to make this round of DVD bidness profitable. And everything starts with putting players in the home of the consumers. At this point, I think it's fair to say that no one really watches high def DVDs. Very very few has PS3 to watch the Blu ray on, and that's about it. Blu ray camp can go on about how much they have outsold HD DVDs, but that's like sales race between Atari Jaguar and Neo-Geo. They are not making any money right now, and it won't start coming in until those players are in people's homes. That's my take on the importance of standalone players.
You are talking about the same company that recognized their gaming division's profitability hinged on the Playstation 2 and not the Playstation 3 right? Sony is very patient and for over a decade now have shown they know how to patiently wait through the profit loss phase of new technology. You are making Sony sound impatient when they have shown no signs of that. If that were the case Sony would have killed all of their DVD sales and attempted to force $400+ players on consumers.
Again you are talking about the same company that went through the VHS Betamax war for over a decade. Where do you get this idea that Sony is an extremely impatient corporation that demands profitability yesterday? If that were the case we would have had the PS3 launching alongside the 360, not a year later.
I think we have two completely different take on Sony. I do think Sony was in rush. Funny you should bring up Beta-VHS, because I'd have said that they would have done anything to avoid a war that long and costly again.
While Sony is not some shortsighted company, they have really struggled last few years as everyone knows. Just about every news regarding Sony I came across was Sony's in trouble for this and that. And no matter what anyone(including Sony) might say about PS3, it's sales have been a dissapointment, which IMO is a huge blow to Sony. Yes, some say that "oh, but PS3 console sales matched that of first year sales of X360". Yeah, but I highly doubt that Sony's aim was to match the sales of Xbox franchise. I've always told people that Sony sacrificed the sales of their gaming console in order to ensure the victory of Blu ray format. But I'm guessing the damage was far larger than they originally thought.
Anyway, due to their economical woes, I firmly believe that, yes, they were in a hurry.
Sure it makes sense for Sony to do it. I have never argued that. What I am asking is, why would it make sens for WB to do it, outside of being on the winning side of things?
I'm bit lost again(sorry). Are you asking why would it make sense for WB to cut a deal to go Blu ray exclusive? My answer would be that WB recognized that the format war was hurting the business. I think all studios had realized that by 2007.
Such as not producing thousands (millions?) of HD-DVDs that will go unsold? There are landfills filled with Betamax tapes, Eight track cassettes, and various other failed formats. Any company that is on the losing side will lose out on million in wasted product. Picking a side that you believe will win will save you more money than anyone can pay you, and it also increases your profitability as your resources are then spent solely on profit, and not loss.
I would agree with that.
Work in a management position and every one of them makes sense in one way or another.
I highly doubt that. You can provide me with examples, if you like. ***Nevermind, I think. Read the bottom***
Why? VHS won out over Betamax because it was cheaper and more user friendly, even if it wasn't the better technology. Stand alone players sold better for HD-DVD because it was cheaper. People looked at both and saw that it was cheaper to buy HD-DVD players, so they did.
I honestly believe the PS3 was the key to Sony winning this war. And many polls show that half the PS3 owners didn't know it would play Blu-Ray. Imagine what happens when that half figure it out.
On paper years ago even I though HD-DVD would win out until I realized that it was in the PS3.
Well, when Paramount made their switch, HD DVD was getting killed. I did not buy their statement at all.
On PS3, yes, of course. And how many of those "50%" PS3 owners who didn't know about the Blu ray capability, they were probably people who got them as gifts, or parents who bought them as gifts to their kids.
I don't doubt there were deals, but I highly doubt any of them were as simple as the lump sums of cash changing hands that many have claimed to try and accuse people of bribes. That doesn't make sense. Now, deals in the form of licensing and royalty discounts makes total sense, but only because that is just everyday business. Hell, at the end of the month I have to send out royalty billing sheets to our Accounts Payable department. There is nothing suspicious about that, they exist for DVD, existed for VHS, and are the same in the music industry.
Well, I don't know about bribes. That sounds illegal. And what you are talking about with accounting, I don't know how that's adding to the discussion(starting to feel like a debate!), because that one's really a given. Is this what you were talking about, when you said "if you were in management"? I can assure you that I am very far from the management
, but I'm not a complete dummy. I do understand how "bidness" works. And if the foot soldiers like me didn't perform, it wouldn't matter what kind of deals you give your accounts.................. I can say that to you, but no, I wouldn't say that to my bosses.
