The problem with this scenario it doesn't take streaming into account which is a serious growth market.

The problem with streaming is that it doesn't look like Blu-ray or even good upscaled media, and there was even an article posted here on Blues not too long ago that it would be a decade or so for streaming to be comperable HD to even upscaled DVDs on a premium upscaler.

There's a place for it with people who like to stream (I personally hate using streaming at all). That place is pretty much TV shows and news, stuff without a lot of visuals. I still buy regular DVDs of stuff like "House" and "Boston Legal". Because it's nice to have a Blu-ray of it, you just don't have to have it with upscaling on TV shows unless they have special effects like "Stargate" or something animated (yeah animated stuff looks pretty damn good).

Battlestar Galactica Blu-ray set was uttterly amazing, especially since it was all pretty much shot in high def video tape. With Sci-fi stuff, gaming special effects and cut scenes, heavy special effect movies, Blu-ray is a *must have* to me. It makes special effect and animated content look amazing.

Over time being the key words there unfortunately. This kind of thing takes years.

I totally agree, but being ahead of the curve and forming a library congruent to the future standard has a big advantage as it has a much, much longer shelf life. I was one of those guys buying PC CDs like Battle Chess and other more obscure titles well before there was anything truly remarkable and I was listening to the same debate about floppies and modems being all you needed...

DVDs took root eventually in the games market, it's been nice not having to install tons of floppies or CDs. I still have some of the large CD install games like Farcry. Blu-ray is doing the same thing DVDs did for the CD transition.

But back to the quality aspect, why pay to stream lower quality when for the same price or cheaper you can get a Blu-ray version rented. The only real advantage streaming has that I might be interested is if I wanted to sit down and watch more than 12 hours of content on a single day. Otherwise Netflix can get me 5 BDs every couple of days.

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.

No, it's not ludicrous... I have 2 Xboxs... I have had to return them 3 times (we have all but stopped using them around here or we would probably wuld have had more returns to speak of). When you return a RROD it's only warrantied for a very short time where you are then faced with a choice of paying $99 for refurb service from Xbox, or you say screw it and buy an arcade version and slap your old hard drive on it for a little bit more, with newer 65nm chips and 45nm processor instead of craptastic first run refurbs that have probably been in 3-4 people's homes already... The advantages of that is to get newer and better internal architecture and hopefully improve the odds you will not be in RROD anytime soon. It is artificial inflation of sales figures due to astronomical failure rates. There are even videos and tutorials on how to do it which I have posted to Blues before. Intentional or not, it has impacted the sales figures legit install base and you truly can't count on every Xbox sold as a potential 3rd party sale anymore.

With PS3, you have to consider early sales to people wanting to best Blu-ray player and who could care less about gaming. So PS3 has it's issues too. However, new slim sales, for the most part, are gamer centric, and I think when compared side by side, PS3 install base will have a higher ratio of true install base than when compared with the 360.

Attach rate is a different story, but then that is always shifting and is in a state a bigger flux now. One can quote old figures, basically taking a few battles and declaring a winner of a long protracted war, or you can just wait and see where things settle after GOW3 hits, and it's effects are known (things between here and there are going to keep the shift occurring). I already know that buying in to PS3 early is going to have the better outcome, but I can understand why some are skeptical about Sony. I also know it's hard to make a transition after being in Xbox land awhile, I did it, but I am very, very happy I made the switch to PS3 earlier, rather than waiting for the inevitable.

This comment was edited on Aug 28, 2009, 12:24.