Blu-ray was a hard sell for me.

I’ll admit it. I’m a believer now, but when I heard the Sony PR people claim that using blu-ray as the disc format for games would create an environment in which game developers would be “limited only by the power of their imagination,” I chuckled a bit.

Are you serious Sony? The developer won’t be limited by the power of the hardware? The developer won’t be limited by the limitations of existing programming languages?

Sure it sounds ambitious, but even Steve Jobs wouldn’t say it.

This brings me to the “future proof” thing. The act of “future proofing” is to provide a product that is as capable as possible to keep up with changes in technology.

Yes, Playstation 3 is the easiest-to-update blu-ray player on the market at the moment. However, that does not mean that the other blu-ray players will never be able to upgrade to a new firmware version, nor does it mean that future players won’t blow away the PS3’s blu-ray capabilities. Additionally, it would be a pretty bad business move to burn all the early adopters.

Let’s be fair here, calling something “future proof” is as cheesy as it gets. Why don’t we go a step farther with this and assume the Playstation 4 will have a superior drive that will play blu-ray and possiblly another new format. Maybe I’m wrong and that bandwidth problem will work itself out. Maybe we’ll all be downloading HD movies and game content online instead of purchasing an optical disc format.

At the end of 2007, HDTV penetration increased from 20% to 25%, according to a Reuters article. To be considered the norm, more HDTVs will need to be sold in 2008 than in every year before.

Right now, blu-ray players are starting to fall in to the $300 price range. In a year, blu-ray prices could easily drop below $200. You don’t buy a PS3 to be your blu-ray player for the future; you buy a PS3 for its blu-ray because you want the blu-ray now.

On the gaming side, it is too expensive for most developers to make console exclusive games this generation. So that means the games will be made to the “lowest common denominator” format, which is DVD-9. So at least until the tail-end of this generation, X-Box 360 won’t be “future vulnerable.”

Additionally, the “additional content” argument is null and void due to the fact that games receive console-exclusive content on all three sides of the fence,

This “future proof” thing will be pretty irrelevant at the start of the next console generation in five or six years. I’m well aware the PS3 is expected to have a 10 year lifespan, but so is the PS2. A 10 year cycle is how long the system will receive support, not how long it will be before a new console is released.

It wouldn’t make sense for a casual gamer to blow an extra $200 today on a blu-ray player they won’t use for several years when they can buy a better blu-ray player for $200 when they can use it.

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