This episode is late due to Jonah having to do some film work, but this show also has some huge news items as well.
The news items this week includes:
Let us know what you think in the comments section.
Is Blu-ray dead? Tech Sites around the Net are calling it a “death spiral” and we’re now looking at the downfall of the winning high definition format. Many non-PS3 Blu-ray players are still in the USD $200.00 range, a bit high for mass market adopters, and people aren’t planning to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player in our economic slump.
What’s the market share of the Blu-ray product? Four Percent. Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 have a lot of battle scares after the fight with HD-DVD to “win” the format war. In the end, Sony won the battle but the war was not with the HD-DVD format, it’s with the average Joe consumer.
Does this effect the PlayStation 3? One of the up sells of the PlayStation 3 was the Blu-ray capabilities, it games and it’s an entertainment device all-in-one. It’s a great deal right?
“The advent of low cost up-sampling DVD players dramatically cut the video quality advantage of Blu-ray DVDs. Suddenly, for $100, your average consumer can put good video on their HDTV using standard DVDs. When Blu-ray got started no one dreamed this would happen.” (zdnet)
The obstacles against the Blu-ray format are huge, especially with NetFlix coming to the Xbox 360, high definition download options and licensing costs on the Blu-ray to movie creators. Blu-ray won’t die in this generation of PlayStation 3 consoles but many folks, including Apple, are pausing to see if it has any chance at all to break into the industry.
Four percent just isn’t enough to inpsire confidence.
Thanks to the influenza bug ravaging the United States right now, there’s no podcast this week. Check us next week for our pre-E3 podcast, however.
This week sees the return of Paul Nowak from his holiday vacation. There’s plenty of news items and some reader feedback, but also the return of Gaming History as the crew checks out the failed portable console, the Game.com.
The news for this week includes:
Finally, the Question of the Week is simple: “What did you do on your holiday break?”
I can’t wait for Wasteland 3! Huge fan of the original and 2, and can’t wait to see how vehicles come into play.
Also am really excited for Torment: Tides of Numenera, too.