In a "shock" announcement, Warner Brothers Entertainment has officially announced that it will be releasing future high definition titles exclusively on Blu-ray from May 2008.
Yes, folks, you read that right. Despite recent protestations from Warner executives to the contrary, it seems that "consumer demand" has won. Obviously Warner's pipeline (where all the plans are kept) is very, very, short.
The official statement begins:
In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format beginning later this year, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.Warner Bros.' move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want," said Meyer. "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers."
Existing titles will continue to be released on both HD DVD and Blu-ray until May, after which time production of HD DVDs will cease. Presumably, they'll then take a similar stance to Paramount, in dropping back catalogue titles as stock runs out.
Warner claims that their previous dual-format stance was "in an effort to provide consumer choice, foster mainstream adoption and drive down hardware prices" but now "to distribute in a single format comes at the right time and is the best decision both for consumers and Time Warner".
This could come as a bitter blow to supporters of the HD DVD format. While Warner sat on the fence, the format war seemed set to persist. Now — possibly — HD DVD is looking doomed.
Yes, I know stalwart HD DVD fans will disagree with me, but please understand that I am format agnostic. I personally can't see how HD DVD can come back from this.
What do you think?
One thing's for sure — I'm taking everything that senior executives say with a very large pinch of salt from now on. The more you deny stuff...
Read Toshiba's reaction to the news.
