The DVD war will be decided by gamers

Over at The Brownsville Herald, Kevin Garcia’s written an interesting article on how the war of the DVD formats will end. According to him, the end of the battles between Microsoft‘s HD-DVD and Sony‘s Blu-ray will be ushered in by the hands of gamers like ourselves.

Historically speaking, consumers have always been the ones with the final say on who lives and dies in the Darwinian process of technological advancement. Before the advent of the disc format wars, battles in the home entertainment industry occurred between the VHS and Betamax tape formats. While the Betamax had better quality playback, the VHS could store more on each tape.

Consumers chose quantity over quality that time, but you never know how future wars in the format industry turn out.

In this case, the war is a little different because of the timetable involved. If it were simply a matter of quantity over quality, Blu-ray would, hypothetically, win out because it can store a lot more data than the HD-DVD. One thing going for HD-DVD, however, is that it’s already more ingrained in the public consciousness, since it’s seen more exposure than the Blu-ray due to the Xbox 360’s release a year ago. The players for each will also be important, as the Xbox 360, while reportedly less powerful, is still cheaper than the upcoming PlayStation 3.

The wild card for this event, however, will be Nintendo’s Wii, since it’s adopted neither format. This means that while the format wars will be decided by two consoles, there are three hardware types gunning for the top spot in the console wars instead.

The only good thing is that we, the gamers, will have the greatest say on which format will gain supremacy, because we’re the ones who will eventually choose the hardware that supports one format over the other. The question now is, which one will you choose, and why?

Over at The Brownsville Herald, Kevin Garcia’s written an interesting article on how the war of the DVD formats will end. According to him, the end of the battles between Microsoft‘s HD-DVD and Sony‘s Blu-ray will be ushered in by the hands of gamers like ourselves.

Historically speaking, consumers have always been the ones with the final say on who lives and dies in the Darwinian process of technological advancement. Before the advent of the disc format wars, battles in the home entertainment industry occurred between the VHS and Betamax tape formats. While the Betamax had better quality playback, the VHS could store more on each tape.

Consumers chose quantity over quality that time, but you never know how future wars in the format industry turn out.

In this case, the war is a little different because of the timetable involved. If it were simply a matter of quantity over quality, Blu-ray would, hypothetically, win out because it can store a lot more data than the HD-DVD. One thing going for HD-DVD, however, is that it’s already more ingrained in the public consciousness, since it’s seen more exposure than the Blu-ray due to the Xbox 360’s release a year ago. The players for each will also be important, as the Xbox 360, while reportedly less powerful, is still cheaper than the upcoming PlayStation 3.

The wild card for this event, however, will be Nintendo’s Wii, since it’s adopted neither format. This means that while the format wars will be decided by two consoles, there are three hardware types gunning for the top spot in the console wars instead.

The only good thing is that we, the gamers, will have the greatest say on which format will gain supremacy, because we’re the ones who will eventually choose the hardware that supports one format over the other. The question now is, which one will you choose, and why?