I want to hear what you guys think of this:
Stolen from HypnosisRising on Gamefaqs.
MS of course knows, as most others that HD-DVD vs blu-ray is a lost cause. There is no way in hell to compete when everybody and their mother is supporting the "enemy".
However, if MS can keep HD-DVD around long enough until they are making the Xbox 3 (or 720 or whatever they are going to call it), they will save money.
Why?
Because by that time the HD-DVD format will be cheap to produce, and they dont have to pay royalties to Sony. (If the BDA would take them at all). Its basically, for the future. What they loose now, they save next-gen by having a cheap and easly to produce storage medium, that they have the rights to produce.
This user on gamefaqs thinks that the reason MS is supporting HD-DVD is to ensure that they have a cheap, large storage format, to use for future consoles. And, even though this guy is from Gamefaqs, he definitely knows his stuff. Of course, this is just speculation on his part, so his knowledge doesn't mean that this is true.
Personally, I don't think his post is true. The part about MS supporting HD-DVD makes sense. MS doesn't have much pull in the movie industry, and with blu-ray having the majority of the support, I really doubt MS went into HD-DVD thinking they could 'win' it. Maybe they thought they could from the beginning, but as time progressed, it would've been smarter for MS to jump ship, seeing as how they have little pull in the format war. Sure they are a large company, but this war is based on movies, and, in that field, MS doesn't have too much power.
Anyway, I don't think it would be in their best interest to use HD-DVD as a gaming format in the future. Sure it would save them the trouble of paying royalties to the BDA, but it would alienate a lot of consumers. By the time the next xbox comes out, there will be a lot more demand for Blu-ray, and it will actually be seen as a plus to the consumer, not as the negative that it currently is. Right now, Blu-ray adds way too much to the price of the PS3 for consumers only interested in gaming. But 4-5 years down the line, Blu-ray players will be much cheaper, and there will be much more demand for them, which is why I think it would be stupid if what Hypnosis predicted were true (I just felt like sharing it because I thought it was interesting).