Upcoming games that makes me glad I'm a species born with opposabl

[Lissa]

1) MS is honestly trying to drive HD-DVD to be the standard bearer for digital movies.

MS is not unknown for swimming upstream, but this one's uncommonly salmon-like, and I don't see a huge payoff if they win. Maybe it's one in the eye for Sony, but Sony's doing a fine job of failing on their own.

No, this is a move to try and bury Sony. Sony is in dire finiacial straights between the battery recall and the lack of sales of the PS3 and Blu-ray. MS is doing what MS always does, it goes for the jugular and MS knows that if they can knock of Blu-ray, Sony is going down.

2) MS is spreading FUD in the HD market to make digital downloads look more appealing, leaving them an opening to be the dominant technology provider in the dominant delivery mechanism for home entertainment.

That sounds a lot nicer to me for MS's long-term interests.

MS was caught flat footed when the Internet started to take off. Bill and Steve have done everything in their power to get MS into the world of the internet, why do you think they created The Microsoft Network? It wasn't because they thought more competition in the Internet access market would be a good thing, they were trying to get their portal up and going. They continue to push their portal, MSN*.com to leverage themselves and give them more revenue.

Going with HD is them trying to gain control over the console market. They know right now that they can't stop Nintendo and they've realized that Nintendo may help them in the strategy sense of the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend (although Nintendo isn't, but Nintendo isn't challenging MS in the graphics market like Sony is).

3) MS is hoping that HD movies become a driver for console adoption.

I don't think this is realistic. It's all about the games.

It's not, it's about removing a rival. Typically when it comes to consoles, their is only room for two companies. MS has realizes that they can't push out Nintendo as Nintendo has the price point and the "fun" factor with their various games. This means that MS has to target Sony and with sales of PS3 being sluggish, MS figures that if they can bury Blu-ray, they bury Sony (which is what it looks like will happen if PS3 fails).

In the end, I think MS is hoping for (2). I think they may get their wish; the split standard is slowing adoption of a set of products that isn't all that compelling to start with.

Not really, it's part of it yes, but more so than anything it's removal of a rival and if they can push Sony out, Sony will be the next 3DO and will disappear which will be a shame as a number of their products are quite good. MS is taking advantage of Sony's situation and very likely, if things don't turn around soon, Sony is going to go under.