I see noone wants to touch the 4mil+ ps3's out there. HDDVD loves to brag on their hardware sales because they can shoot down sony's ps3 claims because there is not hard data.
Movie sales are the proof. You are the one that needs to lay off the punch.
The "PS3 as a Trojan Horse" campaign was suppose to fasttrack the introduction and takeoff of a new technology for consumers: the PlayStation name will create enough demand to compress the "dead" period between zero and high-volume production of BD components. CE companies in the Blu-ray camp will benefit from the drastic price drop (triggered by the high volume production of the blue laser, for example) and soon their standalones will drop below the PS3 in price. PS3, having served it "trojan" role, will start selling primaraly based on its merits as a gaming console and won't need any drastic discounts. This was the BD plan as I see it.
I don't think it worked out quite as planned.
First, Toshiba's player was introduced at $500 what forced Sony drop the price of the PS3
before it was released.
Second, PS3 wasn't quite as a smashing success at introduction as planned (mostly due to Wii).
Third, "PS3 as a BD player" crowd seems to be smaller than anticipated (have the total number of BD disks sold surpassed the total number of BD players, PS3 included?)
Forth, I think BD companies underestimated MS' willingness to go the whole nine yards and not let them have a homerun in the first 6 months.
And all this with total hidef disks sales less than 1% of DVDs, i.e. rounding error on most players' balance sheets. When this number starts going up (and not the 2:1 or 3:1 between BD and HD) then we might have something to cheer about.
The longer this impasse lasts, the more bleeding. And I don't think anybody is bleeding more than Sony. Will it pay off in the end? Time will tell.
I think the outlook today is less rosy than it was a year ago.
Diogen.