PS3 crucial to Blu-ray success

The PS3 - Blu-Ray's saviour
The PS3 - Blu-Ray's saviour

The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) released its annual 2008 report on trends in the video games, TV and home entertainment sectors, revealing the PS3 as critical to Blu-ray's success over HD DVD.

According to the report, which states some pretty blindingly obvious things especially when relating to the gaming/home entertainment divide, the PS3 may have been the deciding factor in Blu-ray winning the hi-def wars.

It also pointed out Microsoft had sold 316,000 HD DVD add-ons for the Xbox 360, which are now working nicely as paperweights in gaming dens the world over.

Blu-ray thinking

The PS3 is set to be the driving force behind Blu-ray penetration until at least 2009, when it is expected standalone players will drop in price to the point where they outpace the gaming machine.

According to the report, 87 per cent of PS3 owners love a little bit of Blu-ray action on their machine; it also highlights the obvious fact that Microsoft's decision to leave HD DVD capabilities out of the Xbox 360 probably scuppered the format.

It's believed 100-130 million homes will own at least one Blu-ray player by 2010, which may sound far-fetched now, but think about how many DVD players you have including computers…we counted 52 between us.

TOPICS
Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.