Game Informer interviews Sony's Phil Harrison

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There needs to be some perspective here. When people talk about Minidisc, like BD, there are two worlds:

(1) Pre-recorded content
(2) Personal recording

Minidisc was a complete flop in the pre-recorded arena, at least in NA. That can't be denied. However, over 100,000,000 Minidisc players and recorders have been sold, making it by far the most successful portable recording format. I've had four myself, the latest a Hi-MD (1GB discs) that allows me to carry my entire music collection and serves as a dump drive for my digital picture taking (a cheap card reader that dumps to the recorder).

Now, with BD, something similar could happen. It could be a flop for pre-recorded but a massive success for recording. But, I think that can only really happen if there are BD burners that read HD DVD (combo drives).

Now, UMD was an OK choice for delivering games. But, it was totally moronic for movies when the prices they could charge made them more expensive than DVD, and they supplied the tools for people to rip DVD to MemorySticks. It was only a matter of time before the consumer saw the value route, and UMD movies died.

It killed Mini-DVD though. While 8cm recordables thrive for camcorders.

Gary