By no means are the two related; Blu-Ray winning the format wars of 2007 (and a bit of 2008) has little to do with the E.U.’s judgement that Microsoft charged too much for interoperability.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have really been going at it, and with the withdrawal of their HD-DVD players from the market by Toshiba (the last manufacturer of HD-DVD players), HD-DVD is officially dead. There were so many benefits that I feel it had, but Sony had the PS3 with which they could BUNDLE another product.
By taking the risk and including a Blu-Ray drive in their PlayStation 3, Sony was able to push the Blu-Ray technology into more than a million homes in North America, and effectively leverage the appeal of one of their products (PlayStation) to introduce customers to another (Blu-Ray).
If this is sounding like what Microsoft did during the browser wars (after which they won), you’re right. There is the element of BUNDLING. But what Sony has done was not illegal under antitrust laws. (Until a lawyer can come along and prove me wrong by winning a lawsuit against Sony, I stand firmly behind that statement.) They do NOT have a monopoly in gaming consoles: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all dominant players, with the Xbox sales at the highest, and the Wii in hyped demand.
Since Sony did not make use of a monopoly to try and gain a monopoly in another field, they cannot be held culpable under law.
However, they did gain a monopoly: since Blu-Ray is effectively the only remaining high definition, large storage disc medium, it will surely dominate the field.
In other news…
Microsoft has been ordered by the European Commission to pay $1.3 billion (USD equivalent) in fines for failing to comply with a 2004 ruling until October 2007. Microsoft was requested to open its software and protocol specifications to other developers, but they have charged large sums for any use of the documents.
Recently, Microsoft has claimed that it will make available the official file format specifications of previously proprietary formats like .doc, .xls, and .ppt. Many are doubting whether or not they will actually do what they have claimed they will do.
There is nothing but contempt between Microsoft and the European Union. It doesn’t seem to be improving, and hopefully the European Commission can put a stop to the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal.
Will the EU fine change Microsoft? by ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn — I think Microsoft needs to undertake some diplomacy that will put a final, definitive line under all this. But what would you do if the EU fined you?
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