OPINION: Next for Blu
By Paul Sweeting -- Video Business, 12/23/2008
DEC. 23 | HAVING STAGGERED through a long and bruising format war with HD DVD, it would have been no real surprise had Blu-ray Disc crumpled like a spent fighter when hit with an abrupt slowdown in consumer spending in that latter part of 2008.
Paul Sweeting is editor of Content Agenda
The fact that it didn’t, and appears to have come through the fourth quarter still on its feet (this column was written before Christmas) has to be considered at least a minor triumph in its own right, leaving Blu-ray to continue the fight in 2009.
So what needs to happen now for the format to succeed in the coming year?
The first order of Blu-ray business for 2009 is an adjustment in strategic planning around the format, by both hardware makers and the studios, some of which will happen naturally but some of which will be forced on the industry.
First and foremost, the PlayStation 3 Trojan Horse strategy has been a bust. For a number of reasons (some related to Blu-ray, some not) the PS3 has fallen into a distant third in the game-console sweepstakes, behind the Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii.
Whatever else you can say about PS3, it isn’t driving Blu-ray hardware penetration and whatever it is contributing on that score is not driving sales of Blu-ray software.
If Blu-ray is going to succeed, it needs to succeed on its own, as a single-purpose, playback-only home movie.
Read the full column on ContentAgenda.com.
