Toshiba has been surprisingly passive lately as the Blu-ray camp have been stating once and again that it is winning the blue laser format war and that Blu-ray will be successor to DVD. But after claiming that Blu-ray media was selling three times more than HD DVD media Toshiba’s executive general manager, Olivier Van Wynendaele, couldn’t keep quiet anymore. He said that the Blu-ray Association’s latest statement was misleading as the big sales peek is because of the movie coupons Sony sent along with its video game console PlayStation 3. Something that has clearly affected the sales. To show how strong the HD DVD format is in the USA, Olivier Van Wynendaele pointed out that Toshiba has sold over 200,000 stationary players nationwide, while there have only been 30,000 Blu-ray players sold.
“Van Wynendaele said that the two million PS3 sales could not be counted because there was no guarantee that people who were buying the consoles were: a) choosing to buy movies with their own money; or b) actually watching Blu-ray movies at all – the vast majority could be using the PS3 to play games on, for example. The truth is, he said, that neither format could claim victory when high def player sales accounted for less than 1% of regular DVD player sales – in the US at least.”
To top it all off, Toshiba announced that it will always, no exception, have cheaper HD format players. In short, when Sony lowers it prices Toshiba will too.
