One Month... exactly. (The holiday season's effect on Blu-ray)

[AV_Integrated]

Thanksgiving falls on November 23rd this year. That puts Black Friday on the 24th of November and gives everyone one month to the 24th of December for the majority of their holiday shopping. This also all happens to coincide with the release of BD players announced by Sony, Panasonic, and Pioneer... and a little gaming system called PS3.

Is it only me, or does it seem like that may really be the first inidcation of how well Blu-ray is fairing in this format war? They have done so poorly so far with MPEG2 & BD25 & Samsung - but it seems that this holiday season may show more than a little shift in how the format war will play out.

Moreso, if Blu-ray comes up short at the end of the holiday season and PS3 fails to impress, where does that leave Blu-ray and how detrimental will it be to them? Do you see studios and CE support shifting, or at least joining the HD-DVD camp should PS3 come out flat and sales of players not be strong? Most of all - what if movies, by years end, still look as bad as they do today? I'm not willing to call it over for Blu-ray then, but it seems like they aren't going to have much of a chance to truly win unless they are strong this holiday season. At the very least, HD-DVD may be guaranteed to coexist for a long time.