That stuff adds up when you toss on 4-5 hours of 1080p movies and cut scenes plus a game. This will continue on PS3. I think the Blu-ray perk is just now being utilized. It's a cheap and easy way to make the PS3 version better and unique, without refitting it to the machine. I think the Movie+game thing is great stuff and I imagine we will start seeing more of that.

Whether or not it continues remains to be seen. I hope that it does as it's good value for the consumer but in the past companies have not been generous with their PS3 versions of their titles. In fact Batman is one of the few I can even name at all with any real extra content. Sony will need spend money here to make this happen and whether they will or not is really going to impact your vision of the PS3's future.

This is a paradigm shift to me due to Netflix (similar to how digital recording services would not be considered in ratings when deciding to cancel a program). People are renting more, I used to exclusively buy, now I rent. Yeah it's because they are overpriced but also because I don't need to buy everything I want to watch either, a change in habit I think many are going through now that Netflix is well marketed, and easy to use (fast). So yeah sales are lower but Blu-ray is being used. It will only go 1 direction every year, and that is a bigger install base. This Xmas should see some serious HDTV install base growth, that's the fertile field that Blu-ray needs.

The problem with this scenario it doesn't take streaming into account which is a serious growth market. People like to rent as you said and "renting" 720p streams is good enough for most people as they have no real understanding of what 1080p is and for many of them they wouldn't even see a marked improvement due to first gen HDTV, non-optimal viewing distances or smaller screens.

I wouldn't go that far at all and I think people will be able to get bigger HD over time. I think projected HD is going to be huge in the next couple of years once the laser models are perfected and even the portables are improved. Your buying decisions now due to software library accumulation should be focused on the future too.

Over time being the key words there unfortunately. This kind of thing takes years. One of the biggest problems is that in many ways the DVD transition barely happened before we were hit with a new wave and many consumers don't see the value yet. For many people who are a generation older, they maybe never will and will only graduate to newer technology when their existing setups eventually die from wear.

If you divide total Xbox 360s sold by 2 you see PS3 trouncing Xbox.

That's a really ludicrous suggestion and this discussion was going so well beforehand. Microsoft has shelled out over a billion in warranty/repair costs. The vast majority of consumers get their systems warrantied, they don't don't go running out to buy new systems. I'm sure there is the odd first gen person who is out of warranty and feels like spending $200 for an arcade to get an HDMI port but there is no possible way that number even remotely approachs dividing the Xbox360's sales by two. What's next, we chop the Wii's sales by half to account for the people who just bought it to play Wii Fit? By that logic people who bought the PS3 just to play Blu-Ray movies must mean that the PS3's sales should be chopped in half because according to you that's a ton of people, right?

Seriously, I am very happy with the direction of the discussion but please don't trot out ridiculous statements like that, it makes it impossible to take you seriously.