BLU-RAY: DOGGED BY DELAYS, WILL IT STILL HAVE ITS DAY?

摘要

Kazuo Hirai, then president and chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Ken Kutaragi, at the time the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, likely felt on top of the world when the two corporate executives took to the stage at mid-May 2005's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles to unveil the PS (PlayStation) 3 game console (Figure 1). After all, the PlayStation 2, for which both men held prominent and visible project roles, had handily won that console-generation war, beating back both historical competitor Nintendo's Gamecube and upstart Microsoft's first-generation Xbox (Reference 1). In the process, the PS2 had become a key factor in the success of optical-DVD (digital-video-disc) media, by virtue of its DVD-playback capabilities and content-subsidized price tag. Sony hoped that the PS3 would play the same role for next-generation Blu-ray media, not only generating profitable revenue for the Sony Studios movie subsidiary but also regaining the lucrative patent-royalty crown that it and partner Philips had held with the optical CD and subsequently lost to fellow competitor Toshiba in the DVD era (Figure 2).