Michael Bay's Format War Conspiracy Theory

[S. Fourteen]

He thinks Bush is in on it.































No, not really. Interesting enough though. I might wait on buying those discs.

What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth.

Bay

http://www.shootfortheedit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=595#top

 

[Jeremy]

Fuck paying $35-$40 dollars for a HD-DVD or BR movie anyway. Really fuck digital downloads.

 

[Jokerman]

It's not a conspiracy, it's just simple economics. If a company has a product that can threaten your buisness, do what you have to do in order to stop them. In MS's case, dropping a few billion to bury Sony and it's consoles is nothing to them.

Format Wars are the purest forms of competition resulting in superior products at lower prices. The only real victims are the companies on the losing side. Currently there are countless format wars going on as we speak. Some have been going on for years (Apple OS vs Microsoft OS), yet ask someone where a format war caused them hardship and most wont have an answer, especially when compared to the performance and savings they got due to the format war.

 

[S. Fourteen]

It's not really about burying Sony, it's about burying "physical products". According to what Bay says, it wouldn't matter if people buy HD DVD or Blu Ray - MS will end up making money from digital distribution. Apple is making a killing from iTunes, because they don't need to spend a lot of money with digital distribution. Imagine if MS, with their market share, offered a comparable service on Windows, a service like iTunes that work seamlessly with a Windows OS.

People wouldn't need to buy discs, they'll get their shit downloaded directly to whatever device they have (PC, Xbox, Zune etc etc) - making your $500 HD DVD player useless. What he means by "creating confusion" is stopping Blu Ray from overtaking - because if everyone had BR players, they would be less likely to switch over - regardless of what is superior.

The bottom line is, it is simple economics and it's a fake war, all according to Bay. There are many holes in this "theory" but have you ever wondered why Xbox 360 owners are forced to buy a separate device for HD-DVD playback? Is it all about cost or is there something we're not being told?

 

[S. Fourteen]

I typed that up without much proofreading, so it's kinda poorly put together but you get the point.

Official statement from MS (I believe at 2006 E3)

“At E3 we showcased our Xbox 360 HD DVD player that is an external drive. Since launching Xbox we have retained a games first emphasis, but we also offer consumers the ability to build on our powerful platform, such as in combination with a Windows Media Center Edition PC. We feel that offering the drive externally is the best way to give consumers the ultimate choice to create their own high definition experiences. We have no plans to release the Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD drive.”

A gaming console that is much more than a gaming console. A media hub, a media hub that doesn't support the next-generation media format, the media format that Microsoft is pouring money into. Giving us an option, or leaving the door open for digital distribution?

Some people might have taken this as 360vsPS3 thing, but it's not.

 

[Jokerman]

First, this is not a "dirty secret no one is talking about," as Bay claims. Every DVD blog and forum has been kicking this subject back and forth since 2005 when clueless Bill Gates said in an interview, “for us it's not the physical format. Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts.”

Now, if there were a conspiracy, I doubt Bill would show his hand like that. I think he was merely making a foregone prediction on what he saw and no doubt hoped for the future.

I think people are mistaking Microsoft’s future trend projections and hopes with a conspiracy to sabotage physical media. It's inevitable that Microsoft will push more towards film downloads, as then they can regulate everything through Windows and the Xbox and generate even more $$$$. But Microsoft sided with the format that uses more of their technology now, acknowledging even in the beginning that HD DVD would be a "bridge" technology between physical media and network delivery. MS knows they're an easy 5-10 years away from HD downloads being viable on any significant scale. I think they are just doing what they always do. They are covering all the bases. They are also priming the pump so to speak, for HD media. That way there will be more HD households by the time they are ready to really do HD download in a big way.

 

[S. Fourteen]

Did you also read the one about format supporters making death threats to one another?