Blu-Ray Takes off Gloves, Picks up Gauntlet, Throws Willy Nilly

Since HD-DVD was pushed back to early next year, Sony is jumping on top of Toshiba in some kind of crazy pile-on play that now draws penalties in football. Execs from Sony are claiming the Blu-Ray will "overwhelm" HD-DVD, citing its bundling with the PS3 and the fact it holds more data as trump cards.

However, Toshiba has countered the argument, saying HD-DVD is cheaper to produce, which will ultimately draw the porn industry to it, and where porn goes, industry follows. Score one for Toshiba. However, a Toshiba boss said, "We're also not convinced that consumers would need to store so much data on disks, especially now that internal hard drives are more popular," which just goes to show you business analysts aren't the only ones completely out of touch with what consumers want. Here's where I throw up my hands and wait a year or two to see how things go. Combined with the $700 (pragmatic vision, here) price tag for either the PS3 or the 360, there's no sense in investing in what could ultimately be the Betamax.