Eating pie..do you have any idea how much Sony paid in order to keep the studios?
Fox and Warner were ready to leave Sony's camp prior to CES only because Sony paid $500 million to Warner Brothers and another $150 million to Fox as Fox was unsatisfied with replication and other manufacturing costs involved with Blu-ray. Not only that they paid them but the deal of the payments was to make announcements and other pricing structures to specifically hurt HD DVD as much as possible which was seen in the way they acted. They first announced the Blu switch while all HD DVD Group members were on the way to CES that year so it would catch them at the worst possible time and they would have no response. That's why Toshiba didn't respond to anything at CES. It was a real back stab. Secondly, they did the early Blu-ray release of movies instead of HD DVD even though they should've respected their agreements until March that year.
Winners write history of course but it was really a power play with cash and deals going down under the table. It was certainly not decided by consumers as we can see by these statistics. But I guess life is like that. I'm glad that we have at least one full HD format anyways. But to say that Sony didn't really pay anything is silly. The future of their company depended on Blu-ray winning so they would've paid anything. If HD DVD won that would've been not only the end of PS3 but they would have no way to recoup the money they spent on Blu so it was really something they wouldn't leave to chance no matter what it cost.
But this is not the only amount that Sony spent. They've spent through the nose just to get Fox to stick with them to begin with then split the hundreds of millions of dollars with Panasonic to help Disney stay on track with Blu. Officially Panasonic was paying for Disney's tours but Sony took a hit as well on the final balance sheet. Not to mention the MGM purchase that was also another investment you can attribute to Blu-ray because they wanted to secure their library to be exclusive to Blu-ray. The whopping amount to get part of MGM was huge in the overall scheme of things.
Sony was already known to do things like this before as well. They took a similar approach a few years ago to gain exclusivity for its Super Audio CD format. Abkco Records reportedly received a large sum from Sony to re-release the early Rolling Stones catalog in that format. Consumers decided they were happier with iPods and that was it. It wasn't a power play such as we had with format war.
Toshiba's Paramount payoff was nothing but a response to an already existing payoff game Sony has started.
Sony lost over $3 billion dollars alone in payoffs and other expenses just to try to get Blu-ray to win and whether consumers love it or hate it they succeeded. As we can see obviously the format who was not favored by consumers won and unfortunately those of us who do want to get great HD quality are now, still, carrying the sloppy format 3 years into it's existence.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bozster @ Jun 23rd 2009 1:34AM
Eating pie..do you have any idea how much Sony paid in order to keep the studios?
Fox and Warner were ready to leave Sony's camp prior to CES only because Sony paid $500 million to Warner Brothers and another $150 million to Fox as Fox was unsatisfied with replication and other manufacturing costs involved with Blu-ray. Not only that they paid them but the deal of the payments was to make announcements and other pricing structures to specifically hurt HD DVD as much as possible which was seen in the way they acted. They first announced the Blu switch while all HD DVD Group members were on the way to CES that year so it would catch them at the worst possible time and they would have no response. That's why Toshiba didn't respond to anything at CES. It was a real back stab. Secondly, they did the early Blu-ray release of movies instead of HD DVD even though they should've respected their agreements until March that year.
Winners write history of course but it was really a power play with cash and deals going down under the table. It was certainly not decided by consumers as we can see by these statistics. But I guess life is like that. I'm glad that we have at least one full HD format anyways. But to say that Sony didn't really pay anything is silly. The future of their company depended on Blu-ray winning so they would've paid anything. If HD DVD won that would've been not only the end of PS3 but they would have no way to recoup the money they spent on Blu so it was really something they wouldn't leave to chance no matter what it cost.
http://formatwarcentral.com/2008/01/04/warner-swayed-by-500-million-from-the-bda/
But this is not the only amount that Sony spent. They've spent through the nose just to get Fox to stick with them to begin with then split the hundreds of millions of dollars with Panasonic to help Disney stay on track with Blu. Officially Panasonic was paying for Disney's tours but Sony took a hit as well on the final balance sheet. Not to mention the MGM purchase that was also another investment you can attribute to Blu-ray because they wanted to secure their library to be exclusive to Blu-ray. The whopping amount to get part of MGM was huge in the overall scheme of things.
Sony was already known to do things like this before as well. They took a similar approach a few years ago to gain exclusivity for its Super Audio CD format. Abkco Records reportedly received a large sum from Sony to re-release the early Rolling Stones catalog in that format. Consumers decided they were happier with iPods and that was it. It wasn't a power play such as we had with format war.
Toshiba's Paramount payoff was nothing but a response to an already existing payoff game Sony has started.
Sony lost over $3 billion dollars alone in payoffs and other expenses just to try to get Blu-ray to win and whether consumers love it or hate it they succeeded. As we can see obviously the format who was not favored by consumers won and unfortunately those of us who do want to get great HD quality are now, still, carrying the sloppy format 3 years into it's existence.