Also, it wasn't the markets that sealed the fate the HD DVD was it? For one, Warner Home Video adopted a single format policy and said they would only license their products on Blu Ray. That was market strangulation, not market forces. One format was always going to win out, I guess nobody wanted to fight another VHS/Betamax fight and the decision was made for us, rather than by us.
Actually, this is a perfect example of the market at work. It's always how it has worked. No corporation has the ability to let democracy
totally decide what succeeds and fails. Each corporation has a set amount of capital within a typical investment cycle to venture into various new technologies. There just isn't enough around to do all of it. So, individual corporations usually take a guess into which will work best for them and which consumers will gobble up. Some times they succeed big time. Just as often, they fail.
Historically this tends to work seamlessly, with few issues. Sometimes, however, it sparks debates and "format wars" because various corporations have differing ideas as to what "best" is best. Sony lost once (Betamax) and was eying not to loose again. It made a lot of deals with a lot of big people (Walmart, fellow technology corporations, various entertainment concerns, etc.) in order to ensure its success.
The corporation I work for was the largest seller of Braun razors in the USA. They were profitable, but were still phased out because, market wise, they weren't as big a seller as the other two electric razor brands (Phillips/Norelco & Remington) and by removing the shelf space that they took up and re-allocating it** to the other two brands; sales of razors, overall, went up. It wasn't that people didn't want the Brauns, it's just that market-wise, investing in the other two high-sellers was a much wiser and more profitable decision. The market almost always works like this: people in high positions make an attempt to decide what's best. Believe it or not, they actually do care about quality and price for the consumer, which though not totally altruistic, is not totally motivated by immediate greed.
The consumer--in the case of HDDVD & BluRay--has one product that is nearly identical to the other. Aside from some nerdy statistics, the two deliver the same HD quality data. In the end, it was marketing and market horse-trading that sealed the death of HDDVD and it's not like the consumer is suffering in quality because of one over the other. As I pointed out before, in the world of marketing, the name matters, and retailers like mine want a name that sound cool. Stupid or not. Tacky or not. The marketing "Three F's" have to be met:
Flashy,
Functional,
Financially Sound. HDDVD had "functional" but it's marketing name wasn't "flashy enough" (new name, cool name being powerful sales tools) and "financially sound" (Sony's wielding and dealing made BluRay more desirable; how? I don't know).
Now does this mean that nothing else matter? Shit. No. BluRay may not last 5 years due to competing forces, but HDDVD is dead, forever.
~String
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**Shelf space in retail being at a premium.