In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax

QuatermassX writes "In a lengthy piece in today's New York Times, Ken Belson equates Sony's troubles in bringing Blu-Ray to market with their classic fumble of Betamax technology in the early 1980's. He also discusses the influence of Microsoft in the recent advances in the adoption of the perceived underdog in this fight, HD-DVD. The article also summarises the various twists and turns in the development of the format along with some scary numbers (that we're familiar with) on the estimated cost of Playstation 3 From TFA: "There are other industry analysts who contend that Microsoft is simply propping up Toshiba to further its own aims, like countering the PlayStation and combating the spread of Sun's Java software. Nonetheless, Toshiba is happy for the backing, given that the format was written off for dead just a few months ago. '"There's no doubt that everyone has various agendas," said Mark Knox, an adviser to the Toshiba promotion group. "But whatever their agenda, Microsoft's support has been a huge boon to HD-DVD.'""

Re:too much concentration of power

[IntlHarvester]

We've always supspected that Bill Gates was building a doomsday weapon, now we know how. Thanks for uncovering his nefarious plots.

Re:Big yawn w/o smaller disks

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the 3.5" optical disks?

What, like 8cm DVDs? They're in the same aisle as writeable CDs and DVDs.

Re:TFA in full to save you registering

[Poeir]

I'm not reading all that.

Maybe they should call it

[Anonymous Coward]

Gammamax.

Re:Sony Underestimates Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the Playstation 3 is still just blueprints,

That's Blu-Prints, thank you.

Sony Legal Department.

Re:Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD is stupid

[hotwatermusic]

"Rocking, shipping products beat rocking paper specs .."

I thought Paper beat Rock..where does Scissors fit in to this model??

1 - 2 -3 shoot.