Blu-ray: resistance is 'futile'

Toshiba cut pricing on its HD-DVD players in US retail outlets last month, but Gartner reckons that the game is already up.

"Toshiba's price cutting may prolong HD-DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format," said Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

"Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market."

The analyst firm stated that Blu-ray will become the next-generation replacement for DVDs, defeating HD-DVD in the consumer market by the end of the year.

Toshiba's price-cutting move followed the decision by Warner Bros to ditch HD-DVD in favour of Blu-ray, giving Blu-ray the upper hand in terms of movie content.

Just two of the seven major Hollywood studios, Paramount and Universal, now back the HD-DVD format.

Microsoft is widely expected to be one of the losers should the HD-DVD format fail to gain significant traction in the consumer market.

The software giant currently uses HD-DVD on the Xbox 360, but would be forced to switch to Blu-ray to enable users to play high-definition games.

This would be a huge blow to Microsoft as the Blu-ray disc was developed by arch rival Sony specifically for the PlayStation 3.