Sony, MS downplay high-def movie war

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

It seems Sony and Microsoft no longer have their hearts fully in the battle over high-definition movie disc formats -- if they ever had them there in the first place, that is. In an interview with Home Media Magazine, Microsoft Consumer Media Group Director Kevin Collins seemed uninterested in making the format a cornerstone of the Xbox 360 package. "Microsoft knew if we put in an HD DVD drive that we would have to raise costs and disenfranchise our customers (that are primarily gamers) as the unit would become too expensive," he said.

While Collins said he was proud of HD DVD's strong performance against Blu-Ray, his desire for a fight to the death between the formats left something to be desired. "The [Blu-ray] camp's claims about Microsoft's desire to have a format war are baseless," Collins said.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer, for his part, told the AP said he thought the high-def disc battle had reached a stalemate, mainly due to the lower costs of HD DVD players and the defection of Paramount to the HD DVD camp. That's OK though ... apparently the winner of the movie war doesn't matter all that much after all. "It doesn't mean as much as all that," Sony CEO Howard Stringer told the AP. Yeah ... and those grapes are probably sour, anyway.

Read - Microsoft / Home Media Magazine (via High-Def Digest)
Read - Sony / AP

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[via] Joystiq